📘 Part 3: New friends and old friends

This episode's vocabulary

Tried and tested - used many times before and proved to be successful.

Avenue (noun) - a method or way of doing something.

Go-to (adj.)- used to describe the best person, thing, or place for a particular purpose or need.

Tie (verb) - to relate to or connect to.

Force for good - the thing or person being described works for what is right.

Sustain (verb) - to cause or allow something to continue for a period of time.

Social gravity well - keeps people together.

Immaterial (adj.) - not important, or not relating to the subject you are thinking about.

Groupthink (noun) - the process in which bad decisions are made by a group because its members do not want to express opinions, suggest new ideas, etc. that others may disagree with.

Irrelevant (adj.) - not related to what is being discussed or considered and therefore not important.

Clinical (adj.) - you use clinical to describe thought or behaviour which is very logical and does not involve any emotion.

Inexplicable (adj.) - unable to be explained or understood.

Cautious (adj.) - someone who is cautious avoids risks.

Niche (adj.) - interesting to, aimed at, or affecting only a small number of people.

Outright (adj.) - proper.

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Questions and Answers

M: How can people make new friends in your country?

R: Well, most people seem to me online these days, especially in this age of quarantines and lockdowns. There's also the tried and tested method of going out to bars and clubs. Oh, and people share hobbies. And of course, they're always like random encounters that happen. And I and other people are close friends with their former partners, despite things not working out in that regard. So there are many avenues for socializing.

M: What's the best way for people to stay in contact with friends?

R: Well, I suppose social media is sort of the go-to option these days, though I'm not sure this provides the same sort of emotional and social depth as face to face meetings where you do things and go places together. And it's possible for people to just come together to enjoy the company. But in general, there should be like a goal, like going for a walk or having coffee. And this ties everything together.

M: How important is it to stay in contact with old friends?

R: I suppose that depends on what they bring to your life, doesn't it? I mean, if they're a force for good then it's sort of crucial, but some friendships can be quite toxic. So they don't really deserve to be sustained, do they?

M: Let's talk about friendship at different ages. Why do students lose contact with their classmates after they leave school?

R: Well, school is like a sort of social gravity well, that holds people in place and that gives them a common cause. And if it doesn't exist, then they're able to float more freely unless you find something else to sort of anchor the friendship in place. And then there's the pull factors of other places to work, other social circles, etc.

M: Do young people benefit if they have a small number of friends?

R: Oh, if they're good friends, then number is probably immaterial. I suppose one drawback might be a lack of different viewpoints or the existence of groupthink, but those are usually easy issues to address if you're aware of it.

M: Do you agree that friendship is more important to younger people than to older people?

R: I think age is irrelevant to the concept, really. People need each other. Having friends is good for your mental and physical health and being healthy is critical regardless of the stage in life you're at.

M: Let's talk about the future of friendship. What might people lose if they stop meeting friends face to face?

R: Well, from a medical perspective, being around people is good for your immune system, but that's a bit clinical, isn't it? There are some things sort of magical and inexplicable about being around people in person. You can see it in classrooms. How people cooperate and collaborate in real time, and how it improves the general mood of things are going well. If we don't see people face to face, we'd probably use a crucial element of our humanity.

M: Do you agree that people are right to be optimistic about the future impact of social media on friendship?

R: Um, well, if we're cautious in our approach, then yes, social media is a powerful and useful tool, but it's also possible for it to corrode friendships as well as, well, people oversharing or projecting a false image of themselves. There are corrective measures in terms of comments and feedback, but that can be difficult for people to hear. Maybe schools should promote some sort of basic awareness on this issue and help students understand how to deal with it.

M: Do you think it's possible for robots to make very effective friends one day?

R: Well, I think they already do in some places there is an article about sex robots being realistic, sorry, not being, having realistic personalities, for example, although this is for like a really niche group of people and not general consumption. It's an example of the direction that we're going in though, it seems likely they will at least be good companions, if not outright friends.

M: So you think in the future we'll have friends, robots friends?

R: Well, I don't really see why not. If people want to, like you should always be friends with people that you want to be friends with.

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