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. //