Placeholder Image

字幕表 動画を再生する

  • - There are some studies that suggest, for example,

  • that being without a close friend, being lonely,

  • is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

  • It's quite hard to measure friendships.

  • What's the quality of that friendship?

  • What's the quantity?

  • When people say they have

  • a certain number of friends, what does that mean?

  • Does it mean how many friends they have on Facebook?

  • It is difficult to get at this quantitatively,

  • and also people I think are a bit reluctant

  • to admit sometimes to not having friends.

  • Loneliness is in some ways quite a stigmatized condition,

  • and so actually getting people to admit to loneliness is

  • something that social scientists really struggle with.

  • I think a big question now is

  • whether we are facing a 'friendship recession.'

  • That's the term that Daniel Cox,

  • a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute,

  • has used to describe this rise in a number of people

  • who lack a certain number of close friends,

  • who have fewer people to turn to in times of crisis.

  • You need a shoulder to cry on,

  • or at least someone to have a conversation with.

  • That's less and less likely to be a friend now.

  • And as society changes in all kinds of ways,

  • technologically, economically, then I think it's important

  • that we pay attention to what is very often

  • an underappreciated human relationship-

  • which is the friendship.

  • Friendships come in all shapes and sizes,

  • and are also formed

  • in very different ways and in very different places.

  • One way we form friends is just by being at the same school

  • as somebody, by growing up in the same place.

  • Another way is through the situations

  • you find yourself in, through work.

  • They're also friends that you form through activities

  • that are chosen, so through a volunteer activity

  • or a sport, athletics.

  • The fourth is online friendships.

  • Those are friendships that are formed through a screen

  • or over the internet in one kind or another,

  • without necessarily ever physically meeting that person.

  • Across human history,

  • there's always been a tribal size,

  • I think to friendship groups,

  • which is somewhere in the teens, say between 12

  • and 15 perhaps is a reasonable number to think about.

  • And then there are close friends.

  • Some people of course have no close friends,

  • but most people have at least a close friend.

  • And most people would say that the ideal number

  • of close friends to have is somewhere

  • around the three or four number.

  • Friendship was something that the ancient philosophers

  • used to take very seriously.

  • If you go back to Aristotle, for example,

  • in some ways seen as the ideal relationship,

  • and one of the reasons why friendship is,

  • I think so important and so idealized is

  • 'cause it's a relationship of genuine and radical equality,

  • and one in which you're not in the friendship

  • in order to get something out of it for yourself.

  • There's no sense of dependency.

  • There's no sense of exchange.

  • It's not a transactional relationship in any way.

  • And in most other occasions,

  • relationships do contain some kind of transaction,

  • some kind of "what's in this for me?"

  • But the definition of a friendship is a relationship

  • where there is nothing in it for you

  • other than the relationship.

  • We've seen a decline in lots of traditional institutions

  • including the family, people marrying later

  • if they do marry, obviously,

  • in areas like religion, in some cases the the labor market.

  • And so, what that means is there's more of a need

  • for people to have social relationships,

  • connections outside of those institutions.

  • That's where friends are hugely important.

  • But during the same period,

  • we've seen a real decline in the number of people

  • who say that they have a number of close friends.

  • There are a number of factors that could be getting

  • in the way of forming friendships,

  • particularly in 21st-century U.S.

  • Number one is geographical mobility.

  • People moving away from their homes,

  • moving to big cities or career opportunities

  • which necessarily stretches their friendship network.

  • Parents are spending quite a bit more time on parenting,

  • on looking after their kids, which squeezes

  • out the time that they might have had

  • for friendships before.

  • There's also a lot of emphasis on work and careers,

  • what some scholars call 'workism,'

  • which is a sense that your identity is so what wrapped up

  • in your work that you don't have as much energy

  • and time left over for friends.

  • And then lastly, I'd point to the breakdown of relationships

  • as marriages break up or couples separate

  • that can be really fracturing of friendship groups

  • that have been formed as a couple.

  • Once they break up the friendship groups

  • very often get shattered as well.

  • There are a few downsides to being without friends.

  • One is lack of access to opportunities.

  • It turns out that many people get a lot of jobs

  • and opportunities and chances to go and do things

  • through their friends-

  • so friends do act as a communications information channel.

  • But there are some quite profound effects on health, too:

  • Mental health, and even physical health.

  • It's not exactly clear what the causal relationships are,

  • what's going on, but it is clear that having friends

  • is protective of your health in various ways.

  • And so it's not just that being without friends

  • can make you isolated in a sort of economic

  • or a social sense, but it can also make you sad.

  • And being sad it turns out is also bad in terms

  • of your physical as well as emotional health.

  • Today, 15% of young men say

  • that they don't have a close friend.

  • That was just 3% back in the 1990s.

  • And so, we're seeing a fivefold increase

  • in the number of men have no close friends.

  • Back in 1990, almost half of young men, 45%

  • said that if they had to turn to someone

  • in a time of trouble, it would be to a close friend.

  • But now that's dropped to about 22%.

  • And in fact, there are more men, about 36%

  • who say that they would go to their parents.

  • And so that's a quite a radical transformation

  • in the social networks

  • that we've seen, particularly of young men.

  • The pandemic has been a sort of stress test

  • for our friendship networks.

  • Interestingly there,

  • we see that it's women who've been most affected:

  • with more than half of women saying they've lost touch

  • with at least some of their friends.

  • I think that's because female friendships are more based

  • on physical relationships on face-to-face time,

  • whereas male friendships tend to be more mediated

  • perhaps through activities or technology.

  • We don't know for sure, but that gender gap is suggestive

  • of the fact that women's friendships are more in need

  • of more regular physical contact than male friendships are,

  • which is maybe why women's friendships are born

  • the brunt of the impact of COVID

  • on those friendship networks.

  • There's obviously a dystopian version

  • of how these trends could continue, which is

  • a world of essentially atomized individuals without friends,

  • isolated, sad, lonely, perhaps in ill health.

  • I think that's why we have to pay real attention

  • to these trends, and to recognize that friendship

  • is incredibly important for human flourishing,

  • and that people want to make friends.

  • We are wired to want to be social creatures

  • and to be friends-

  • but that it might be harder

  • for us to do so in certain circumstances.

  • Circumstances where we're under too much pressure,

  • where we're too segregated, where the opportunities

  • to cultivate friendship are not there.

  • A key lesson that we learn is

  • that friendships don't form themselves.

  • Friendship is not a flower that just blooms all on its own.

  • It's more like a woodworking project that you have

  • to carve out and continue to work on.

  • One of the necessary steps to making a friend

  • is to admitting that you want to make a friend,

  • to being open to that.

  • That requires a certain vulnerability.

  • It requires you, in some ways, to reveal a need, a desire.

  • And I think as we get older, there's sometimes a sense

  • of shame that comes along with not having enough friends

  • and actually saying, "I need a friend,"

  • is maybe one of the hardest sentences

  • that any human being can utter.

  • - Get smarter, faster,

  • with videos from the world's biggest thinkers,

  • and to learn even more from the world's biggest thinkers,

  • get Big Think+ for your business.

- There are some studies that suggest, for example,

字幕と単語

ワンタップで英和辞典検索 単語をクリックすると、意味が表示されます

B1 中級

The friendship recession | Richard Reeves(The friendship recession | Richard Reeves)

  • 32 2
    林宜悉 に公開 2023 年 04 月 02 日
動画の中の単語