Hi, Sam here. Happy Friday and welcome to Radio Headspace.

As you may know, I have a 14 year old stepdaughter who is legitimately addicted to her phone.

She's obsessed with keeping chat streaks going and she even has anxiety about letting

too much time lapse, like we're talking more than two minutes before she responds.

In adolescence, we're trying to see if we can make it on our own, breaking away from

our family of origin, nurturing friendships, and making connections.

All this got me thinking about the power and importance of friendship.

We all know that friendships bring fun, support, and deep meaning to our lives, but it's

not always easy to make new friends or maintain old friendships.

In a moment, I'll give you some tips on how to nurture friendships.

But first, let's see what science has to say about friendship and its effect on our health

and wellbeing.

Researchers at the University of Virginia looked at how friendship influences the way we

approach challenges to daily life.

In a study, they asked one group of students who were walking alone and a second group

who were with another person to wear a heavy backpack and climb a hill.

Before they climbed, the researchers asked them to gauge how steep the hill was and how

hard they thought it would be to climb it.

The students who were alone thought it would be harder to climb and gave it higher levels

of steepness than the participants who had a friend with them.

The researchers found that the longer the friends had known each other, the less steep the

hill appeared.

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