Friendship: The Most Overlooked Public Health Asset

Abstract

Friends confer powerful benefits to physical and mental health, happiness, longevity, economic mobility, work productivity, civic participation, and community resilience. In the face of twin crises—the loneliness epidemic and the friendship recession—friendships are more important to understand and facilitate than ever. Yet friendship is undervalued in public discourse and invisible in public policy. Drawing from research across and beyond social psychology, this paper describes the profound consequences of the current state of social affairs—and the ways friendship can not only combat those but also boost flourishing on individual and societal levels. The paper then outlines a set of grounded policy recommendations aimed at making friendship easier to form, maintain, and prioritize across the lifespan. These include coordinating a national response to social disconnection, integrating friendship skills into school curricula, embedding friendship into eldercare infrastructure, and—provocatively—prioritizing friendship alongside already-subsidized romantic and familial relationships. A closing offers caveats: effective policy can, at best, create the conditions for friendship to flourish; it cannot mandate affection. By treating friendships as determinants of physical, mental, social, and public health—as essential as sustenance, exercise, and sleep—policymakers can take real strides toward a healthier, more connected, and more resilient society.