We don’t know much about happiness , but what seems to be certain is that is very much related to the bonds of affection we have with other people . Except in the minds of a few philosophers, happiness is basically found in life in common with others, in the image about ourselves that other people reflect on us, and in personal projects that only exist because we all live in society.

Now… how can we modulate our social life to bring us closer to happiness? According to a study published in the journal Psychology and Aging , one of the keys to being happy when you reach maturity is to have had many friends in your 20s and good friends in your 30s .

A research that has lasted three decades

This research has lasted 30 years and was initiated in the 1970s, when 222 young people were asked to keep a diary of all their interactions (and certain characteristics of these, such as the degree of intimacy and their subjective appreciation of how rewarding they were) with other people over the course of two weeks. Ten years later, these same participants were filling out the same type of diary again, so that they had two categories of data to compare with each other.

The researchers wanted to check to what extent the social networks woven during early adulthood influenced the quality and solidity of the social relationships one has when reaching maturity . They assumed that during late youth the social life of consolidated adulthood is focused, something that directly influences the happiness of each person.

That’s why, when these people reached the age of 50, the research team recontacted 133 of them to answer a series of questions related to their social relationships, the roles they played, the amount of interactions they went through. They also answered items related to their perception of their own quality of life and psychological well-being .

Go from flower to flower at 20, focus at 30

After a statistical analysis of the data, the research team found that the quantity of social interactions at age 20, rather than the quality of these, was associated with greater well-being at age 50 . People who in their twenties had a very active and busy social life tended to reach 50 feeling less alone, less depressed, with a greater sense of autonomy and, in general, obtaining positive scores on items related to quality of life.

At age 30, however, a large number of social relationships were not predictive of a better quality of life decades later.

Why does this happen?

There is a possibility that this is because what is expected from social life and friendship changes as one grows up .

Early youth is a time when one tends to want to experience many things, live many emotions and, consequently, to have more numerous and varied social interactions . This is something that makes learning possible during an age when it is very important to know how things work and when important life projects are not yet fully established.

At the age of thirty, however, this need for variety has already disappeared and more value is placed on those types of interactions that are best suited to more established tastes and preferences. People are beginning to be more demanding and selective, and this is also reflected in their social life, since coming into contact with many people of all kinds could become a form of “distraction”.

From “anything goes” to “I don’t have time”

The conclusion drawn by these researchers can be illustrated as a broadness of vision towards social life that becomes narrower as the years go by, to finally be focused on those types of interactions that we have learned are beneficial and that bring us a greater degree of well-being than the rest.

However, this is not the only possible explanation, since it could also be that the Western model of life rewards those people who at 20 have more free time than at 30, although this is a hypothesis that would have to be tested in other research.

In any case, this study serves to confirm that throughout our lives we change on many levels, both individually and socially , and that this has consequences for our psychological well-being. Research in this sense can help us to be more informed about which life strategies can bring us closer to happiness when we reach full adulthood… if by then we have already learned what it means to be happy.

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