How do college students create, maintain and lose friendships?
In Dartmouth sociology professor Janice McCabe’s new book, “Making, Keeping, and Losing Friends: How Campus Life Shapes College Students’ Social Networks,” McCabe draws on longitudinal research with 95 students at Dartmouth College, the University of New Hampshire and Manchester Community College to analyze how features of higher education institutions can hinder or facilitate the formation of friendship networks and shape the relationships students form.
McCabe sat down with The Dartmouth to discuss types of friendship networks, why friendships fade, how students can be intentional about maintaining meaningful relationships and the “friendship market” — a term she popularized to refer to periods when people are particularly open to making new friends.
What first sparked your interest in studying friendship from a sociological perspective?
JM: My own friendships, and thinking about them. It’s hard to shut off your sociology brain once you start thinking about things through a sociological lens. I also felt like network analysis, which I learned how to do in graduate school, was a great way to mathematically think about networks as well, pairing that with people’s stories of their friendships.
You talk in the book about an ongoing “epidemic of loneliness and isolation.” From your perspective as a researcher, what does that look like today?
JM: Sometimes being around people is actually when you feel the most lonely because you don’t feel like you fit in or belong. Loneliness is really the subjective feeling that people have, which is what makes it an epidemic. Looking at the numbers, I was surprised that young people — teenagers to people in their early 20s, like young adults — have the highest rates of loneliness, followed by elderly folks. Despite the fact that students on college campuses are surrounded by potential friends — so they’re not alone — you can feel lonely.
Your study looked at three different types of institutions: a small private college, a large public college and community colleges that are non-residential. What are some of the institutional features that make it easier or harder for students to make and maintain friendships?
JM: I use the term “friendship market” to think about these times and places where people are more open to making friends, using the market metaphor, buying and selling friendship. Residential colleges like Dartmouth and the University of New Hampshire have orientation programs, dorms for first-year students and activities particularly for first-year students, that form what I call the initial friendship market. The first few weeks of college are when people are the most open to making friends, and people make friends quite quickly during that period.
Campuses differ on the strength and the breadth of those different types of programs and activities that are part of the initial friendship market, as well as what I call the secondary friendship market. Students that don’t make friends or don’t make good friends during that initial period, they’re not doomed. There are other times when people just make friends, but there are also these structured opportunities to make friends that happen.
Beginning a study abroad is another period. Or joining a Greek organization is another period where students told me the main reason they join is to make friends. People are really open to making friends and letting new people into their friendship networks during those periods.
You also developed a typology of friendship networks. Some people are “samplers,” others are “compartmentalizers” and others are “tight knitters.” Could you explain those three types and what you found?
JM: Samplers are the least dense group. They visually look like a daisy flower. Compartmentalizers look like a bow tie. They have two to four, sometimes five, different groups of friends that are connected within the groups, or compartments or clusters, but not across them.
And then tight knitters look like a ball of yarn, and that’s what we tend to romanticize, too.
A lot of TV shows, a lot of movies show people with one group of friends. And so one of the things I found is that students were often comparing themselves to that and expecting to just have this one group of friends. All three of those types have things that feel easier because of them, and things that are more challenging with people's friendships because of them.
You also ended up writing about losing friends, even though that wasn’t originally one of the chapters in the book. What made you realize that friendship loss was important to examine?
JM: I didn’t expect to write a chapter on losing friends. I think people tend to hide losing friends because it doesn’t feel good, usually. People don’t want to admit that they lost friends or they’re cutting people out. Yet it is something that happens all the time, too. We maybe tend to think about these dramatic breakups that happen, but more often, friendships just fade away. And propinquity, which I talked about in the talk, was a big part of that. When people are living nearby or having similar class schedules or living in the same town or in the same building, it makes it easier to stay in touch. When you don’t have that propinquity, friendships easily fade away unless someone makes an effort to maintain it.
What are your plans for continuing this research?
JM: I’m continuing to interview the people that were the focus of my book, “Making, Keeping and Losing Friends.” Most of them are in their mid to late 20s now. Not all of them. The community college students, in particular, were incredibly varied in age when I first interviewed them and still are. But generally, it’s that time period for the UNH and the Dartmouth students.
I’m curious about the network typology, too, and how I saw that change for many people during college. I’m curious what may propel people to a certain structure after college. Also, how many of their friends from college they’re still in touch with, whether the lessons they learned in college about friendship kind of translate to life after college. And then I’m curious about, given these incredibly high rates of people saying that they have friendships with AI, exploring that as well.
Is there anything else you’d like to emphasize about friendship or what you’ve learned through this research?
JM: I think friendships overall are something that people often let fall into the background because they think they’re just things that happen. Putting some effort into your friendships and thinking about not just which friendships are easy, but which friendships are most meaningful to you, which are most important to you, which support you and sustain you and feel good, can really make your life better.
What concrete advice would you give to students, particularly Dartmouth students, about how to make and maintain friendships in college?
JM: I think recognizing that your friendships will change over time, too, and that if a friendship is meaningful, it can be really useful to do things to maintain it.
But if it’s more a friendship of convenience, that is a normal part of life also. And it may not feel good to let it go, but it can open up more time and energy for other friendships that may be more meaningful.That’s one thing. And I think taking advantage of all of the different activities and clubs and house communities at Dartmouth can be our friendship markets. They’re built in there to help you both make friends at the beginning of college and to make new connections throughout college.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
