I would be alarmed by this if I thought it represented anything but one journalist's effort to manufacture a trend.
Here's the only piece of data in this article:
Most children naturally seek close friends. In a survey of nearly 3,000 Americans ages 8 to 24 conducted last year by Harris Interactive, 94 percent said they had at least one close friend.
Hm. Looks like that might indicate the exact opposite of this article's thesis. Fortunately, the journalist has found some really powerful individual anecdotes!
“I just really don’t have one person I like more than others,” Margaret said. “Most people have lots of friends.”
I'm no sociologist, but the problem with this datum is kind of obvious. Nobody but a social idiot would, using their real name, tell a newspaper reporter that "I have twelve friends, but only one of them is a really close friend". That's a good way to lose eleven friends.
Comments
This has got to stop. And by this, I mean psychoanalyzing every single aspect of childhood to the point of saying that having a best friend is "bad".
Seriously.
Stop it.
I would be alarmed by this if I thought it represented anything but one journalist's effort to manufacture a trend.
Here's the only piece of data in this article:
Most children naturally seek close friends. In a survey of nearly 3,000 Americans ages 8 to 24 conducted last year by Harris Interactive, 94 percent said they had at least one close friend.
Hm. Looks like that might indicate the exact opposite of this article's thesis. Fortunately, the journalist has found some really powerful individual anecdotes!
“I just really don’t have one person I like more than others,” Margaret said. “Most people have lots of friends.”
I'm no sociologist, but the problem with this datum is kind of obvious. Nobody but a social idiot would, using their real name, tell a newspaper reporter that "I have twelve friends, but only one of them is a really close friend". That's a good way to lose eleven friends.