Scientists find friends aren’t forever after all

Bad news for those of you reading this and who are over 25 – whatever circle of friends you’ve constructed by now, that, I’m afraid, is as good as it’s going to get.

Because 25 has been identified as the age when your quantity of friends reaches its peak – whatever about the quality of them.

You build them up through school and college, you socialize more before the onset of small children; you’re free to enjoy life, meet up for drinks as many nights of the week as you choose, and the world is your oyster.

After all, it gets trickier and more expensive to keep up that social whirl; babysitters don’t grow on trees and crèche fees can prove dearer than the mortgage.

Move on a stage further when, not alone are you not the one enjoying the nights out, but whatever few bob might fund that return to the social stage now goes on supporting your own children’s nights on the town – so it’s home alone for the old folks.

Like a graph, it’s all on the rise until you’re 25 and then it’s downhill from there to the finishing strait.

In fairness it should be pointed out that this is primarily in relation to friends on social media, which probably suggests this is really the age you acquire friends who actually exist.

Chirping away through your thumb and phone isn’t really a sign of friendship as we used to define it – and even social media’s most earnest supporters wouldn’t suggest that a contact via the internet is the same thing as an actual friend.

There was a wonderful cartoon of a widow at her husband’s funeral in a cavernous church, with only one other mourner in situ.

“I deliberately picked a Church this big,” laments the weary widow. “I thought there’d be a huge crowd because he has over a thousand friends on Facebook.”

But this scientific survey relied on the phone records of more than 3.2 million mobile users in Europe, which were then analysed by researchers at Aalto and Oxford universities.

They found that those aged 25 and under talked more to friends than any other age group. But older people spent more of their free time socialising with a small group of family or friends.

In other words, younger people had a lot more friends in a parallel universe while older people actually met the people they were friends with.

The downside for all of course is that you lose friends as you grow older – through no fault of your own. It’s commonly known as death.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.