How to Make Friends Like a 9-Year-Old
And why your social life sucks.
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You’re lonely because your adult social life is a bureaucratic accident. Most of your adult friends came bundled with your workplace, your gym, your spouse, or the cul-de-sac you could afford during the pandemic housing frenzy. They’re like that weird pre-installed app on your phone you’ve never used but can’t delete. Or that weird-ass tactic by U2 where their new album Songs of Innocence was automatically loaded on new iPhones (people went fucking ballistic because interest declined significantly after Joshua Tree).
Critics of the move mobilized just as swiftly as the release they were decrying. The Washington Post called it "rock-and-roll as dystopian junk mail." Slate asserted that it was "extremely unsettling" that "consent and interest are no longer a requisite for owning an album, only corporate prerogative."
Our social lives continue to move in the wrong direction, captured horrifically here:
Stop removing half of the sexes as potential friends- link
Stop eliminating half of the political parties as potential friends - link
Stop only seeking friends with nearly identical views - link
Do end relationships with so-called friends who are assholes to you - link
Kids Play a Different Game
Kids will be on a playground for six minutes before they’ve already declared:
This is my best friend.
We’re starting a club.
Yes, you can’t sit with us…if you like axolotls.
You? You’ve lived in the same neighborhood for seven years and still don’t know the name of the guy across the street. Because you’ve been busy. Because he looks like the kind of person who uses ketchup as a spice.
Stop.
Kids are micro-mentors in the friendship sphere.
Rule #1: Proximity serves as starter fluid
An idea based on a research study you never read but need to - here.
You're 15, clutching a duffel bag, walking into a boarding school dormitory in Peru. Your bed assignment is random (unlike my 18-year-old twin daughters and their friends who spent months shopping for college roommates on social media). In this study, researchers used randomized dorm assignments to determine who sleeps next to whom for a year. Scientific-grade evidence for the role of real estate in our relationships.
What happened in the study should terrify anyone who thinks they're in control of their social destiny. The students who ended up as neighbors became friends at dramatically higher rates. We're talking 16.6% points higher. What’s cooler than cool: this proximity effect was strongest between students completely different from each other. Poor kids befriending rich kids. Academic superstars clicking with struggling students. Racially diverse kids going from one activity after another with requests to be on the same team.
In other words, physical closeness obliterated the very prejudices that normally keep us in bubbles.
Welcome to the proximity paradox
Observe nine-year-olds and could have guessed the results. They care less about shared history though their parents trained them to. They care about shared energy.
“Hey, want to build a fort?”
“Want to trade snacks?”
“Want to talk about Pokémon until we forget our parents are late again?”
If another kid is nearby and willing to engage, and there is no crowd projecting a spotlight, action takes place, irrespective of demographic background.
Rule #2: Open weirdly
Adults are social hedgehogs. Most activities start with stiff politeness and end with someone backing away into the safety of their to-do list.
Kids skip that. They open with absurd shit:
“What’s your least favorite dinosaur?”
“How do you think that old guy over there is gonna die?”
They test. They flirt with risk: this could be fun if you can hang. We, the adults over 30, forget that. One of my mantras is to think like a kid. Unfortunately, I have been told by many an adult (in the social gathering and dating world) to act more like an adult. Which I often reply: “Explain to me what I am supposed to be talking about because I missed the instruction manual.”
By pretending to be how an adult is supposed to be, we grew predictable and numb to how many people around us are waiting to talk about something delightful and waiting for an invitation to do something outside of the cookie-cutter routine.
Rule #3: Declare it out loud
Adults think friendship should be a slow accrual. Muted drinks while watching a soccer game. Maybe after 14 months of lunch meetings, we’ll dare to say: “Hey, want to… do something not work-related?”
Kids declare friendship like a marriage vow.
“You’re my friend now.”
“Let’s sit together every day.”
Imagine saying that to someone at your coworking space. Take stock of the emotions that arise when envisioning the scenario. There is a lesson in there about your ratio of avoidance versus approach moves at work. At home. At the soccer game.
