Friendship is usually a resource. But many teenagers have friends who are not only not suitable for them, but even dangerous. And it’s not at all about the fact that our good boys and girls will be taught bad things by other teenagers.
How often in our childhood, parents said: “Don’t be friends with Petya, he doesn’t suit you.” Or: “Sveta influences you incorrectly.” Many of us were forbidden to be friends with certain guys from the yard or classmates. More often, adults were guided by the desire to protect us from bad influences, saved us from bad companies. But do parents always need to pay attention to this? After all, there are much more dangerous pitfalls of teenage friendship.
It has long been a joke of psychologists that every child, no matter how much his mother and father love him, will always have something to tell the psychotherapist. Each of us has a list of complaints about significant adults. But many received traumatic experiences in childhood, not only from their parents, but also from their peers. Yes, friendship can be a very stressful experience during adolescence. But it can also be a resource.
Friends are our second ego
The longing for close friends is almost as old as humanity itself. Already in the oldest literary work in history, written in cuneiform more than 4000 years ago, the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, the friendship between the god-king Gilgamesh and the ordinary man Enkidu is told. Even in antiquity, the close relationship between two friends was one of the most important themes of rhetorical art. “What is a friend? Another ego. Two souls in one,” Cicero wrote about his best friend Atticus.
Sometimes friends are allies in common affairs, those who support us in development and self-improvement, important helpers in everyday life, and often even those who save us in trouble. Often we find them in youth, and they accompany us to maturity. Sometimes they are even more important to us than family.
“Friendship is one of the central stages of social cohesion,” says sociologist Heinz Bude. Researchers have long argued about the definition of friendship and have not come to a consensus. Some mean friendship as a voluntary personal relationship based on mutual sympathy, trust and support, but not on kinship or sexual relations.
At this age, everything is hypertrophied. If friendship, then forever, if resentment, then deadly
However, the bond can be as close and strong as with a partner or with siblings. We may have friends in sports, outdoor games, business or university.
Social psychologist Beverly Fehr of the University of Winnipeg, Canada, has been studying how friendships form and develop since the 1990s. “When two people first meet, they don’t talk much about themselves at first,” Fehr says. If the first contact is pleasant, we gradually open up more. “In the early stages of a friendship, it is important that our sincerity and frankness be mutual.”
It is only when both parties to the relationship take risks that their trust develops. In youth and youth, best friends play an especially important role. They help overcome the turbulence of puberty and, unlike their parents, share a desire for individuality.
Between the ages of 13 and 25, a “best friend forever” is essential. During this period, friends are our main support and a prerequisite for socialization. The Shell Shell Youth Study, conducted three years ago, found that 89 percent of young people said it was especially important to have good friends—they ranked higher in the responses of respondents than “family” or striving for “responsible living.”
Consequences for many years
That is why teenagers and young people so painfully perceive even a small quarrel with a friend or girlfriend. “At this age, everything is exaggerated, hypertrophied. If friendship, then forever, if resentment, then deadly, continues Beverly Fehr. – Teenagers are like bare wires – they sparkle instantly, they take everything very close to their hearts. This is the period when everything is painted either white or black.
And against this background, bullying is especially dangerous, which today has several varieties, two of them are the main ones: bullying (systematic physical or psychological violence by one person) and mobbing (bullying by a team). The phrase in the Whats-App-Gruppenchat chat sounds very painful for 12-year-old Marius: “Oh, just lie under the train and help us all with this,” writes his classmate Luka. “He would be doing himself and the world a favor,” echoes another classmate. “Jumping off a bridge is fine too. But he doesn’t have the guts for that.”
The reason for this persecution is banal. Obviously, Marius quite often shows himself brightly in the classroom, he is too noticeable. The proposals of classmates have only one goal – to destroy Marius. And, it seems, not only in a figurative sense. And if your friend suits or plays along with the persecution, with whom you shared secrets yesterday and believed like yourself? Young people perceive this as a deadly betrayal.
For some victims of bullying, this burden is so unbearable that they develop serious mental disorders at an early age.
British researchers have confirmed that young victims of bullying continue to suffer years later. In a paper published in The BMJ Journal, they found that one in three depressed young people in the UK had been bullied as a child. In the dissertation, the researchers described a large-scale project they implemented in the 1990s in the English city of Bristol, with 14 inhabitants.
Respondents were asked questions about their health. Among other things, 4000 young people were interviewed at the age of 13, and then again at the age of 18 – this time it was about the presence of signs of depression. Of the 683 respondents who said they were harassed at least once a week at age 13, nearly 15 percent had depression at age 18. This proportion was three times higher than that of other 18-year-olds who did not experience childhood bullying.
The victims of bullying were children who were excluded from the peer community, slandered, robbed, threatened, blackmailed, or even beaten. When the researchers added other factors, such as behavioral problems or family difficulties, to the analysis, the association between peer harassment and depression was less pronounced. However, the proportion of young victims of bullying who subsequently became depressed was twice as high for these respondents as for others.
Mobbing provokes diseases
According to a study published in the American Journal of Psychological Science in 2013, even serious illnesses, failures in professional life and reduced social contacts can be long-term consequences of bullying. In a large-scale study, psychologists studied the life experiences of 1420 participants, first at ages 9 to 16 and then at ages 24 to 26.
Research data showed that those who experienced bullying as children were at greater risk of serious physical or mental illness in adulthood.
According to the German Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, up to 30 percent of children and adolescents in Germany are subjected to abuse, harassment and humiliation, find themselves in a difficult situation and isolation.
For some victims of bullying, this burden is so unbearable that they develop serious mental disorders at an early age. According to a study published last year by the Baden-Württemberg State Institute for Communications in Stuttgart, online mobbing has also increased among teenagers.
Of the 17-12-year-olds surveyed, 19 percent reported that incorrect or offensive messages had already been circulated about him or her. More than 30 percent of the cases of depression diagnosed in the study may be related to childhood bullying and humiliation, the scientists say.
Researchers recommend timely intervention in such incidents in the lives of children and adolescents. “This may help reduce the burden of depression later in life.”