Quantity vs. Quality

The Big Group Appeal

It’s very gratifying to be part of a group of close friends. Close friends can be loosely defined as those with whom you share multiple communications a week. As a result, these friends are updated on your life, share your interests, and are part of the flow of your daily activities. A setting like high school encourages these friendships. After all, you’re together anyway, your lives are in sync, and you are often like-minded (at least like-minded enough to have chosen the same school from among other available choices). A recent poll found that the average American has five to nine close friends within a circle of about 15 good friends.

Sara remarks, “Our group regularly hangs out in school and has a rotating Shalosh Seudos every week at one of our homes. We do a lot together and are all very similar in many ways. I would say, though, that within my group I have five really close friends with whom I am the most comfortable being my real self, though I share a warm friendship with the others in the group.”

Many people are also part of an even larger group or social circle. There are both benefits and trade-offs to this. The more friends one maintains, the lighter and shallower the friendships may become. This is because it is simply too hard to juggle and maintain many diverse friendships and keep up a busy and productive life of your own. The need to communicate often can be distracting and therefore people resort to mass texts, generic conversations (“What’s up…” “Nothing much…” “How about you?”) and simple friendliness (as opposed to real friendship). Even more distantly along on the friendship chain, you may have acquaintances that you may consider yourself just “friendly” with.

What about the lure of status that a swirling crowd of friends creates? Many people mistakenly assume that they need to have many friends to show evidence of their popularity. In truth, those friends provide a busy buzz, but may not provide meaningful friendship.