A friend is someone you tell your secrets to, run when you need advice, a shoulder to cry on when you are sad and someone to have a laugh with. Studies show that the average American only has two close friends compared to three in 1985. This is because the pace of life has sky-rocketed in the past decade. People are a lot busier with their work and their family.
Danielle, Katrina and I went around asking students at UNCSA how many close friends they have. We defined a close friend someone you could tell anything to and you would trust they would not tell others. Parents and siblings did not count in this poll. We interviewed a total of 70 High School students. 22 were boys and 48 were girls. 17 were Freshmen, 31 were Sophomores, 14 were Juniors and 17 were Seniors.
We discovered that boys and girls have fairly close to the same number of friends. Most girls had five to nine friends and no girls didn't trust anyone. Most boys had five to nine friends too but some guys didn't trust anyone. Very few people trusted more than 10 people.
Then we asked students in different grades how many close friends they had. Most freshman had five to nine friends. Sophomores have the most range in the number of close friends they have. Many Juniors trust more than 10 close friends! Seniors have between 2 to 9 friends.
The averages were all very close. Boys did have more close friends than girls but only by a third of a friends. Freshmen and Juniors trusted more people than Sophomores and Seniors.
I think that it is very interesting that the Juniors and Seniors look like they have more close friends than the underclassmen. I wonder how many of their close friends are from the school, or maybe at home... I'm not sure. That's really cool though that you got to seventy people!
ReplyDelete~Abby
It's interesting how juniors said they had the most close friends. I am a junior and I answered the survey saying that I had at least 10 close friends, which is true, but maybe I trust people too easily!
ReplyDeletethat's interesting how apparently as you get older the people you really trust get fewer. great idea for a lab. very cool.
ReplyDeleteIt's really interesting to think about how many people you can trust and how social capital is affected by that. Yay!
ReplyDelete-Synthia
I like your experiment on social capital and trust. Good work. I wonder what you make of the results? I would like a little more analysis.
ReplyDeleteThe video clip from Wall-E is great and is perfectly about social capital, connections, and trust. The final lab about having no cell phone was well done and very thoughtfully written about. Bravo. Good work.