People in the UK have fewer “best friends” than people elsewhere in the world – but it might be a positive sign that we don’t spread ourselves too thinly.
On average, Brits consider 2.6 people to be their “best friends”, a lower number than any other country included in Snapchat’s global friendship study. In contrast, people in Saudi Arabia consider 6.6 people to be best friends.
But our smaller friendship circles aren’t necessarily a bad thing.
The report suggests those without friends or with overly large friendship groups find it more difficult to talk about their problems when they are feeling low. In contrast, a having a few close pals can make it easier to open up.
“Having a few friends is a positive signal,” observed Kate Leaver, author of the Friendship Cure. “It means we know we don’t need to measure our self worth in how many friends we have, and that we know how to value those friends we do have.”
The study, conducted by Snapchat’s parent company Snap Inc, looked at the friendship habits of 10,000 people across the UK, Australia, France, Germany, India, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the US.
While people in the UK have 2.6 best friends on average, interestingly, you are most likely to have just one best friend in the UK, two good friends and six to 10 acquaintances. One in seven (14%) of us don’t have a best friend at all.
Not only do we have the lowest number of best friends, we also don’t want any more, standing us in stark contrast with India, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
The study also suggests our age could be a contributing factor to the way we view friendship. Millennials in the UK consider themselves to have more acquaintances than Gen Z, with over one third (36%) citing between two and five acquaintances as opposed to just one in four (27%) of Gen Z quoting the same number.
Gen Z are also more worried that the number of friends they have impacts the quality of those relationships – when surveyed, 44% of Gen Z felt that having a lot of friends inhibited them from spending time developing a close relationship with their best friend, as opposed to 36% of Millennials.
The UK is lagging behind the other nations surveyed when it comes to gender stereotypes and friendship, though. Globally around half (51%) of men talk to their best friend(s) on the phone, but in the UK, just one third of men (39%) said the same, compared with over half of women (53%). Only a quarter of men (vs one half of women) in the UK said they seek emotional support from their best friends when they are feeling down.
“Women are raised to be communicators. We chat and we exchange advice on everything. Men are less inclined to want to debrief on their lives; they’re more likely to keep it to themselves,” Leaver commented, noting that suicide is the leading cause of death in men under 45 in the UK.
“We train young men to believe that they must be stoic above all else and I think that desperately needs to change. We need to empower and educate men to develop emotional intimacy more easily and more profoundly.”
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