Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day. —Dalai Lama
“How many Facebook friends do you have?” There’s only one group of people to whom that question’s answer actually matters: Marketers. They look at the number of friends as a ratio for the number of people you influence. You like something, they are more likely to like the same thing. You buy something, they may buy something similar. Marketing looks at a friend not as a relationship but as leverage for selling.
You know was well as I do that social media “friends” or “followers” aren’t actually relationships, though. Those people, or the numbers, might make us feel a little better about ourselves but they’re not going to come help you move. That sympathetic online friend isn’t likely to buy you the drink you really need. The random Twitter follower isn’t likely to lend you the money you need to fix the car. While there might be the occasional exception, most online friends typically stay that way: online. We don’t develop real relationships with them.
The people who are really our friends, though, have a bigger impact on our lives than we might have thought. Mainly, the depth of those relationships and the number of them we have, help us to live both longer and healthier lives. Being my friend, in real life, is good for you, even if I’m occasionally a pain in the ass. What’s more, there’s actual science to prove it.
Everybody Needs A Friend
I’m drawing results from the longest-running study of human wellness and development, the Harvard Grant Study. The Grant study started in 1938 with 730 men. Half were Harvard sophomores. The other half were young men from the slums of Boston. For over 75 years, researchers followed these men through their lives, through war, through marriage, through various employments, and into retirement. They looked at everything, including their health. They even did brain scans. And what was the top takeaway from all that research? Friends, good, strong relationships, keep us healthier and help us to live longer lives.
This goes beyond just having a best friend, though that is definitely a strong factor. The larger one’s real-life friend network is, the more likely they are to live longer and be more satisfied with the content of their lives. Having friends who share experiences, who are sympathetic and supportive, and who just “hang out” are all important. These are the relationships that stay with us. A friend that is with us at age 50 is more likely to still be our friend at age 80 and beyond.
What’s important about this level of friendship is that a friend is encouraging. Friends that create and promote conflict are not helpful. Relationships that are constantly in turmoil actually do us more harm than good. Divorce can be healthier than living in a high-conflict marriage. Yet, where we have a friend on whom we can depend, a friend that makes us smile, we are more likely to be healthy.
Loneliness Kills
What is equally important to realize is that just as quality relationships prolong our lives, the absence of them shortens our lives. At any given point, on any day you choose, one in five Americans says they’re lonely. Loneliness kills. Those who are isolated from society are more likely to die sooner. Those who do not have a friend to whom they can talk are more likely to develop terminal diseases that lead to death.
By contrast, one should note that it is not merely the presence of friends that keeps us healthy, but the depth and quality of those relationships. A line that seems to be important is the age of 50. Prior to reaching middle age, friends are more numerous but they are also more likely to come and go with some frequency. As we get older, however, the number of friends begins to solidify. The relationships that matter get deeper and have more meaning in our lives.
This does not mean that having more friends makes life easier. The Grant Study started in 1938 and right away a majority of the participants were flung into World War II. Some who were well off and privileged plunged to the depths of poverty. Some who were raised in Boston tenements rose to the top of social standing. The ranges of experience varied dramatically. What remained consistent is that those with a good friend, those with strong relationships, weathered the storms better.
Friends Protect Our Brains
I find it especially interesting that having multiple strong relationships not only helps us live longer, but they also help protect our brains. Looking at study participants who are now in their 90s, those with a healthy dose of friends experienced the effects and diseases related to dementia at a much slower rate and later in life than those who did not have a strong friend network. Having friends keeps our brains functioning more strongly, helps our memory recall, and keeps our brains more nimble.
When we are young we collect more friends to help us feel a part of society. We surround ourselves with those who are like-minded in an effort to validate our own opinions and lifestyle. As we get older, however, we begin looking for that friend who is going to be there long-term, even if they are not physically close. The friend who we may not see every day but is there to talk with even on the boring days is invaluable. Having friends who don’t judge, with whom we can be ourselves, keep us healthy and happy.
Interestingly enough, among the 60 study participants still living, which happens to include one former US President (think about it), every last one of them has repeatedly confirmed over the years that friendships are a dominant factor in their happiness than either money or fame. Some have done well financially, others are barely getting by, but they all agree that it is those deep, abiding relationships that make life worthwhile.
I don’t know about you, but I’m always open to more friends; the real ones. Let’s do coffee. Perhaps we’ll both live longer.
Smart or Stupid, Is That A Question?
I’m not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues. —Franklin D. Roosevelt
Is there a problem with being smart or are we trying to justify stupid?
Americans, apparently more than any other country, have an obsession with being smart. We heap praises on those who demonstrate intelligence beyond the norm and we get upset when we realize that our educational system is producing graduates who can only read at a fifth-grade level. Even our television viewing skews toward characters we perceive as smart. Programs such as Scorpion and Elementary (based on the character of Sherlock Holmes), consistently generate high ratings. We even like our comedy smart. The highest rated sitcom, for multiple seasons, is The Big Bang Theory, where we watch allegedly intelligent scientist bumble their way through life. One of the reasons we like that show is because it delivers lines like these:
The bluntness of the exchange makes us laugh, but at the same time, we recognize the intelligence of Sheldon’s response and consider ourselves smart when we use that line on someone else the next day. We like being smart. Although, perhaps more correctly, we like thinking that we’re smart. Many of us are lacking in cognitive skills. The intelligence of television characters doesn’t rub off and make us smarter. Some people are stupid.
We Have A Problem
Once upon a time, the rate of acceleration in IQ among high school graduates was pretty impressive. Psychologist James Flynn found that from 1932 to 1978, IQ scores in the US increased by 13.8 percent. Putting that in other terms, a score that was average in 1932 would be in the bottom 20% in 1978. Yay us! I’m in that 1978 group. We’re smart!
Unfortunately, that trend failed to continue. Just because we give allegiance to intelligence doesn’t mean we’re all doing well in the brain category. Measurements are tough to come by and even more difficult to verify, but that are glimpses of where we stand. Consider that the College Board, the entity that administers the SAT, considers a score of 500 as a benchmark for who will do well in college. Not everyone takes the SAT, but if we look at states where the test is free and participation over 90 percent, we find that only 33 to 40 percent scored above that benchmark.
An article published this month in The Atlantic, while trying very hard to convince us that there is an unfair war on stupidity, admits that:
… less intelligent people are more likely to suffer from some types of mental illness, become obese, develop heart disease, experience permanent brain damage from a traumatic injury, and end up in prison, where they are more likely than other inmates to be drawn to violence. They’re also likely to die sooner.
Being Smart Isn’t Easy
I was amused by Jeffrey Zacks’ essay published on aeon disproving brain-training games and exploring how difficult it is to expand our level of intelligence. His list of things that are marketed as improving our intelligence, such as programs offered by Lumosity, which rocketed to a high of 50 million users, and PositScience, which isn’t quite as popular but uses a similar methodology, is long. He makes a very good case against brain-training, especially.
One of the general issues with many of the concepts that are supposed to help us improve our brains is that they only focus on one particular segment, usually related to memory. For example, does anyone else remember those little plastic games with the tiles that moved around to create a picture, or put numbers in order? Those little devils actually help advance our cognitive ability, but only in the area of recognizing patterns. Likewise, those tricks for helping remember people’s names do improve some memory skills, but only in terms of memorizing lists. The effects are not transferable.
While we think of Adderall and Ritalin as being primarily used with children who have attention deficit issues, there is evidence of them improving the cognitive ability in normal adults as well. This area of study might actually be promising accept for the fact that the effects are short term. They give a momentary boost of cognitive enhancement, but then it stops as the drug wears off and over time the “crash” goes below the starting baseline. Users are trading a moment of lessened ability for a moment of enhanced performance. Oh, and the drug that works best? Nicotine. Go figure.
Solutions Are Available
Strip away the biases of both articles, and what we find are solutions that can make us all smarter and reduce the rate of stupidity (yes, I’m using the word) that seems to be prevalent over a frightening number of people. We simply cannot excuse the growing trend among those whose cognitive abilities are diminished to demonize those who are smart. Atul Gawande, in his commencement address to the California Institute of Technology, made an interesting conclusion after talking about the growing distrust of science:
Even more than what you think, how you think matters. The stakes for understanding this could not be higher than they are today, because we are not just battling for what it means to be scientists. We are battling for what it means to be citizens.
Indeed, we need to be smart and that means we need to do the things that not only make us smarter, but put us back on track toward making our children and grandchildren smarter as well. Top priorities must be decreasing poverty and improving the quality and availability of early childhood education. One of our most stupid moves comes when we oppose funding that can solve both those problems. At the same time, nutrition and exercise, especially cardiovascular activities such as swimming, biking, and walking, are among the best ways to not only increase cognitive ability but prevent its decline as we get older. We have options.
Is This Really A Choice?
One thing for certain is that I’m not going to stop calling out those actions that are stupid. Perhaps we do need to be more careful in clarifying that, generally speaking, it is one’s actions and not the specific individual who is stupid. At the same time, though, we must realize that we are not nearly as smart as we like to think. We could be much smarter, even if we’re older and out of school. Our future depends on increasing our country’s overall intelligence so that we don’t do something incredibly stupid like nominating a bigoted, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, reality television host for president.
Oops, it may already be too late.
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