Friendship is a fantastic relationship that has to be cherished. Without friends, our lives would be incredibly dull and awful. Thanks to God, life gave us friends.
We doubt if there is any person in this world who doesn’t have a single friend. Today on friendship day, let’s celebrate this magic and learn some cool friendship facts. Are you ready?
Friendship Facts 1-5
1. It is just not humans who have friends. Several studies prove that many animals like baboons, elephants, dolphins, horses, and chimpanzees make inter-species’ and same species friends. Whales have BFF’s!
2. According to a study conducted at the University of Chicago, nine-month-old babies can understand social relationships even before they can walk or talk. They watch strangers talking and can make guesses whether strangers are friends or not!
3. If you want to make your friendship stable, then you should know what irritates your friend.
4. You and your friends most likely share the same social status.
5. Having no friends is bad for your health. How bad, you ask? Same as smoking or being overweight.
Friendship Facts 6-10
6. In this busy life, we are losing friends pretty quickly.
7. If you fall in love, then most likely, two friends from your friend cycle get pushed out.
8. 38% of teenage boys confessed that they would share their gaming handle with someone they want to be friends with.
9. According to a study, 57% of teenagers made a new friend online, and 29% of teens have more than five friends on the internet.
10. According to a survey conducted on Facebook users, people consider their online friends as offensive and rude. This didn’t reduce the time they spent online. The reason for this behavior being people like to judge people silently but do nothing about it.
Friendship Facts 11-15
11. Talking about your troubles to friends but not doing much about solving those problems is something that everyone does. It may strengthen your friendship, but in the workplace, it has a reverse effect. Instead of a decrease in your stress levels, they shoot up for your friend and you.
12. According to several studies, passively using Facebook, i.e., checking Facebook but not interacting with anyone, creates a negative effect on you, and increases your envy.
13. According to a study, when people are with friends, a task is not considered very risky or dangerous. However, the same task is considered dangerous when people are all alone.
14. We can manage to have 500 acquaintances and can remember the faces and names of 1,500 people at the max.
15. The number of casual friends that you can handle is 150. The number also has a name; it is called ‘The Dunbar Number.’
Friendship Facts 16-20
16. Friendship works the same way as to respect. You need to invest your time, efforts, and love into the friendship to get the same from the other side.
17. Studies proved that if you spend more time on friends, the friendship will last for a longer time.
18. College students spend most of their time on socializing. They spend 10 to 25 hours a week on socialization! The amount of time goes down as we get responsibilities. It takes a nosedive when you get married.
19. According to a joint study conducted by MIT and Tel Aviv University, only half of your friends reciprocate your feelings.
20. A researcher of Ohio University chalked out five qualities of friendship, i.e., friends should be voluntary, personal, mutual, on the same ground, and affectionate. He drew inspiration from Aristotle, a Greek philosopher.
Friendship Facts 21-25
21. College friendship groups can be boiled down to three types – tight knitters who have a massive network of friends, compartmentalizer who have clusters of friends, and lastly sampler who chooses to have a single friend instead of having a group.
22. Aged people who think that their friends are burden are more vulnerable to suffer from chronic illness. Older people who think that their friends are a support system are not that vulnerable to chronic illness.
23. Having a healthy friendship with your spouse is five times more important than physical intimacy in marriage.
24. Three to six-year-old kids consider anyone who participates with them as a friend. The concept of values and characteristics in friendships starts when the kids are nine years old. It is this time where they start to have meaningful relationships.
25. One of the significant aspects of friendship is ‘person-qua-person factor,’ meaning friends view you as an irreplaceable and unique person and not any random person.
Friendship Facts 26-30
26. Having three to five best friends would make you healthier.
27. If you have a friend in your workplace, your productivity increases by seven times! Guess what, you would enjoy going to work every day.
28. If you are happy with your friends, then most likely, you are happy with your life.
29. 36% of the people quit smoking watching their friends quit. This is one of the very few ways where peer pressure is good!
30. Friends are better influencers than money when it comes to motivating you to hit the gym.
Friendship Facts 31-35
31. If one friend in your friend circle is obese, you also tend to eat a little extra unknowingly, in any case. If your friend hits the gym, you are also likely to hit the gym!
32. Older people develop dementia when they feel lonely. It is irrespective of whether they have friends or not.
33. There is something called the cheerleader effect. According to this effect, people look more attractive in a group. It may be because attractive people increase the appeal of the group. Hence, everyone looks better in a group.
34. Women who don’t have friends are twice more likely to succumb to breast cancer. Women (who don’t have friends) are 66% more likely to succumb to any disease than the ones who have friends.
35. A study found that most people said they had zero confidants. Loneliness is a real problem in the US.
Friendship Facts 36-40
36. As of today, people have two best friends at the maximum. 25 years ago, the number was three.
37. Older people live 22% longer if they have a big friend network.
38. A study administered shocks to a few subjects, their friends, and complete strangers. Subjects reacted the same when they or their friends were administered shocks.
39. Close friends share 1% of the DNA, making them as fourth cousins (genetically speaking).
40. It is proven that if you have good friends, your stress levels decrease.
Friendship Facts 41-45
41. In one lifetime, we make 396 friends. However, only 1 out of 12 friendships last.
42. The size of your friendship network remains more or less the same.
43. We lose half of our friends every seven years. This is the reason why it is said that if your friendship lasts for more than seven years, it will remain for life.
44. Men are physically more attracted to their female friends and overestimate the way these female buddies perceive them.
45. If you don’t have a friend in your workplace, then there is only an 8.3% chance of you liking what you do.
Sources…