Gone are the days when friendships were strengthened by the time you’ve spent together, trust, loyalty and the “being there” quotient. In our “socially networked” society, shared interests drive the friendship chariot. So, your closest pal needn’t only be your classroom buddy you shared candies with, but it can also be a person you met at the park, swimming classes, language classes, or even at a chat room in one of the social networking websites.
Scientists from the University of Southampton, Royal Holloway, University of London and the Institute of Zoology, London have found that when we change interests, we change our friends.
“I once went to a dog kennel to pick up a Labrador. There was a person there who started guiding me about the breed of dog I should buy and why Labs make the best dogs and friends. We started talking about dogs, exchanged numbers almost instantly, and before we knew it we became great friends. I may not be in touch with my school friends today, but I meet this guy pretty often at the park where we both go with our dogs,” shares Meru, an IAS aspirant.
For someone like Mihir, who is passionate about music, friendship always stemmed from similar interests. “I think you can never really develop long lasting friendships if you don’t have similar interests. In today’s fast-paced life, the little time we get, we want to spend with people we have something in common with. When I was in Xavier’s College Mumbai, I became friends with this guy I met in the canteen after we had an hour-long conversation about music,” says Mihir.
But even as we scurry through this list of friendships blossoming out of shared interests, it sometimes raises one question, “who are these people, are they really our friends”? More interesting is the fact that the Internet has radically changed the way we find friends. “These casual friendships are a hit as there’s not much time left to commit to friends. Life is so busy that all of us prefer to spend the little time we get with people we click with. I joined a Facebook page called ‘Yuva Revolution’ sometime back, and today I have some good friends from this community. We have never met, but I can spend hours discussing various topics of national significance,” says Utsav Chaudhary, a student.