The End of the Best Friend. | Hacker News Reader

The End of the Best Friend.

nytimes.com

20 pointsschleyfox15 comments

This has got to stop. And by this, I mean psychoanalyzing every single aspect of childhood to the point of saying that having a best friend is "bad".

Seriously.

Stop it.

I would be alarmed by this if I thought it represented anything but one journalist's effort to manufacture a trend.

Here's the only piece of data in this article:

Most children naturally seek close friends. In a survey of nearly 3,000 Americans ages 8 to 24 conducted last year by Harris Interactive, 94 percent said they had at least one close friend.

Hm. Looks like that might indicate the exact opposite of this article's thesis. Fortunately, the journalist has found some really powerful individual anecdotes!

“I just really don’t have one person I like more than others,” Margaret said. “Most people have lots of friends.”

I'm no sociologist, but the problem with this datum is kind of obvious. Nobody but a social idiot would, using their real name, tell a newspaper reporter that "I have twelve friends, but only one of them is a really close friend". That's a good way to lose eleven friends.

This article is infuriating. They're effectively trying to social engineer these kids to prevent a few side effects that are crucial in their development.

Why is it that we think that kids are somehow meaner now than they were at any other point?

To play devil's advocate for a moment, only addressing the point of bullying:

While you and yours may have the support structure and innate tendency to become stronger as a result of early-childhood bullying, I think the schools' argument is that the potential harm in a student being bullied to the point they hurt their future educations/careers is greater than the potential good of bullying for those who can withstand it.

Social fortitude is like any other aspect of development in that some children will obtain it sooner than others. Those that get there first become the popular kids and the kids that simply don't care. Those that don't arrange themselves into ``safe'' cliques or take what the other children say to heart and believe that they are stupid/ugly/weak and will never be able to change. If the parents are not available, the school would need to be able to provide individual support to nurture these kids to the point where they can stand up for themselves. This is difficult in public schools, so the alternative they are using is to encourage all the children to spend time together.

Now, devil's advocate aside, since I believe I can provide the type of supporting atmosphere that will help a kid toughen up, I would likely not send my child to a school like this. However, faced with the problem of unreliable parental involvement, I can somewhat understand the school position.

It's not that we think they are meaner, it's that we think they can't handle anybody being mean to them. I'm beginning to believe the biggest crisis in America is middle school administrators (ok, maybe a touch of hyperbole...).

Yeah these kids had better learn to be friends with everyone, or else it's detention all year!

Interesting take on the NYT article here:

http://inmedias.blogspot.com/2010/06/if-any-friendship-coach...

When I read this quote: "I don’t think it’s particularly healthy for a child to rely on one friend," said Jay Jacobs, the camp’s director. "If something goes awry, it can be devastating. It also limits a child’s ability to explore other options in the world." My unfounded but immediate assumption was that nobody really like him when he was a kid.

But more seriously, there is an approach implicit in the article that I have seen quite often in schools and large businesses. Because leaders are unwilling to do the hard work of examining problems on a case by case basis and creating solutions (Often because they are unwilling to suffer the criticism that indiviual decisions create) problems are approached from rediculous and overly broad perspectives. (See for example Zero Tolerance policies in schools, airport security, etc.) Being unwilling to confront bullies in this case is leading to the deliberate elimination of best friendships. By making it a policy, it eliminates having to make hard decisions, one can now simply say, "Policy says...." and punt.

Using twins as the anecdotal sample for whether children have best friends is another point against the thoughtfulness of the author. As a twin myself, I would argue that twins have a built-in best friend and thus rarely have another "best friend" like a singleton would, so they are a particularly poor choice to illustrate anecdotal evidence that kids don't have single best friends.

Hey, I wasn't a weird loner. I was a trend setter!

Looking at this from a networking scenario, will this create a mesh network of relationships, where a balanced trust is generated through each node, sharing information through the network replicating over each node... Okay now picture 1984, where everybody is equal, people can't have relationships, the government regulates everything... I don't know, something about this disturbs me. I have 3 friends I'd trust my life with, who'm I was best buds with in the respective areas/schools I went to (I went to different districts moving around alot). I haven't been diagnosed with anything other then to lose my college beer gut.

I think we should just replace humans with computers. Then you can program exactly who they talk to. And ban firewalls!

It's the Brave New World, SWPL version.

"increasingly, some educators and other professionals who work with children are asking a question that might surprise their parents: Should..."

This kind of meddling makes me sick. Dear educators, stay the hell away from my kids.

I'm getting tired of all this trumpeting of the end of this, the end of that, the end of everything.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com