How friendship affects your brain - Shannon Odell

Dig into what happens to your brain during adolescence that changes how you value, understand, and connect to friends.

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If it seems like friendships formed in adolescence are particularly special, that's because they are. Childhood, adolescent, and adult friendships all manifest differently in part because the brain works in different ways at those stages of life. During adolescence, there are changes in the way you value, understand, and connect to friends. Shannon Odell explores the neuroscience of friendship.

Lesson by Shannon Odell, directed by Biljana Labović.

This video made possible in collaboration with Bezos Family Foundation

A special thanks to Ilanit Gordon who provided information and insights for the development of this video.

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Thank you so much to our patrons for your support! Without you this video would not be possible! Clarence E. Harper Jr., Vignan Velivela, Ana Maria, Exal Enrique Cisneros Tuch, Tejas Dc, Khalifa Alhulail, Martin Stephen, Jose Henrique Leopoldo e Silva, Mandeep Singh, Abhijit Kiran Valluri, Morgan Williams, Devin Harris, Pavel Zalevskiy, Karen Goepen-Wee, Filip Dabrowski, Barbara Smalley, Megan Douglas, Tim Leistikow, Ka-Hei Law, Hiroshi Uchiyama, Mark Morris, Misaki Sato, EdoKun, SookKwan Loong, Bev Millar, Lex Azevedo, Michael Aquilina, Jason A Saslow, Yansong Li, Cristóbal Moenne, Dawn Jordan, Prasanth Mathialagan, Samuel Doerle, David Rosario, Dominik Kugelmann - they-them, Siamak Hajizadeh, Ryohky Araya, Mayank Kaul, Christophe Dessalles, Heather Slater, Sandra Tersluisen, Zhexi Shan, Bárbara Nazaré, Andrea Feliz, Victor E Karhel, Sydney Evans, Latora, Noel Situ, emily lam and Sid.

[rellepainite]

Having friends is important, but having REAL, GOOD friends is priceless. Trust me, finding people that deserve your kindness and time is hard but worth it!

[emmavrijburg]

Genuine friendships can literally save lives and im thankful for mine

[dieclno]

Hey kids, keep holding on a bit. In teen, I almost had no genuine friends, didn't have much family either. But I grew up and learned to place value on myself and understand what I value on others. Life was not always fair, but now i have the handful of people I can call friend, and they truly care. So take care of yourself, bad things happens, but good things happens as well. Remember that, okay?
(I wrote this as a reply to a comment, but I think some of us needs to hear these kind of thing time to time. So here it's again.) <3

[saikrishnathiwakarrk]

TED is a friend too, speaks about all kinds of stuff from summoning earthworms to gossiping about Zeus's relationships, rate of gold to how jaguars was the unlucky charm in aztec mythology, this is one friendship I sure won't regret in life .

[Krishnendulaha]

My sympathy toward all the teens who spent their adolescence friendless and getting bullied... only few would understand what you missed out

[juliachanel]

it really hurt hearing this as a 15 year old that has never had a genuine friend since the age of 6. I really want a good friend. I always listen when other people talk and I’m genuinely interested and I try to understand them, but I feel like i’ve never met anyone that cares so much the way I do. People I’m around don’t care what I have to say.

Edit: thank you for everyone that responded, it makes me feel less alone :) I didn’t think anyone would see this so I just typed this in a very depressed mood. But I’m mostly fine, just the friends part of my life is a bit off. I’m planning on participating in activities and clubs in my school so i can meet more people, I’m not hopeless, just a bit tired. I really like being by myself but it’s hard if you don’t have any friends. And I will not change for anyone when looking for friends, and neither should you. I know that, ,my time hasn’t come yet“ and I know I should be patient but oh does it hurt seeing people my age live their teenage lives, ,to the fullest“. Okay, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone and let people that read this know and relate that yes, we will not be able to tell cool stories about our teenage years to our grandchildren. But we can work on ourselves. Adapt new hobbies. Try to respect ourselves. Maybe none of that will resolve the loneliness, but you’re gonna feel better and will get out of bed. Just wanted to end this on a more positive note. Take care of yourself.

[creativohugo]

Honestly I have more genuine friendships now nearing my 30's than I did when I was jus reaching my 20's. To anyone seeing this video remember that your own life experience can be different than the norm and is never too late to make meaningful connections with others.

[Cesquis]

I would ask that they make a follow up to this video regarding what we should do if we did not have a close friend in our childhood or adolescence, whether it be due to bullying, extreme introversion or the inability to feel lonely, a faulty Theory of Mind (found in people with autism), or just plain bad luck.

[Suzzers]

I went through multiple fake friendships that ended. One ended really badly. Watching the people around me negatively change saddened me, and eventually they became people I no longer knew.

[carmcmaster]

i've always struggles to make friends and i've always felt the need to take on the other persons personality so they'll like me better. funny how brains work.

[goldenvulture]

Finding a true friend can be hard. But keeping them once you've got them is incredibly difficult. True friendship requires many things to keep it alive including loyalty. Though its always being tested it is worth its weight in gold.

[cerarobert]

It's difficult to find true friends but when you find they'll always have your back. I am still searching for a friend. 😄😄🥰

[wolfstar]

I feel like most of my friendships die out because I don't put enough effort into them, but I'm afraid of being annoying or judged by my friends. I keep having these horrible intrusive thoughts about whether my friends truly care about me, and I can't seem to reach a clear answer. Putting all your trust into someone is like a gamble, they might seem like they'd value and reciprocate your love and trust but it doesn't always turn out that way, and that hurts.

[smanjula]

"Good friends are like diamonds precious and rare,
False friends are like autumn leaves lying everywhere"

[amiramohammed]

I never really had a true friendship until college. The friendships I had in my childhood and teen life apparently I was the only one who thought they were true. When I went to university I had new friends and we didn't really understand each other at first but as years passed we grew to understand each other and became good friends whom I really treasure now.

[VermaJitin]

"A friend is someone who makes it easy to believe in yourself." "A good friend is like a four-leaf clover; hard to find and lucky to have." "The language of friendship is not words but meanings." "Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you; spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life."

[terramater]

Friendship is essential not only for us but also for other species. Our crew managed to get on camera an amazing relationship between a crocodile and a bird, in which both work together to help protect their eggs. In this case, of course, the brain works in a different way, but still highly beneficial for those involved.

[other]

This video actually makes me sad, because I feel I missed out on something special in my teen years :(

[tanishkagour]

My best friend's name is also Priya😭 i really struggled with the concept of friendship in my adolescence and early teenage years because i was always excluded by people i literally knew since kindergarten. But priya is my soulmate and I'm very grateful for her

[lostwanderingprince]

As someone who almost do not have any friends or even a real family to go to my entire life, it's difficult to come across topics like this and now I want to write/express the following and maybe someone in a similar situation can relate and feel less lonely, I'll write the following not for pity but for the other purpose I stated. You just have to pardon my grammar. Since the pandemic began I realize many things and faults in myself including my issues socializing. This has roots starting from the issues of my parents, then me not being able to really pick up/learn things while I was much young that lead me not being able to not allow myself to get bullied in school for years, plus the body dysmorphia that I'm feeling right now because sometimes you have things that you can't control plus some other factors but yeah at the same time I still have my own things that I can control. I'll try not to focus much on these and just express my sentiments about socializing because as you can see that I have a lot going in my mental health, things like trauma, emptiness, loneliness, fear, etc. So about socializing, it's hard for me. Me being misunderstood happens a lot and yeah I have my own faults too that hasn't much given chance to explain and ask for reconciliation. Not being able to have friends at a really young age kinda end something special because I can say that for my experience now that I'm 23 turning 24, it's a challenge to befriend someone who possibly has already people/friends of their own. Tho I can say that I became more socially withdrawn, I'm still longing for people who can understand me and share my interest, I'll return the good favor too. I know being a hikikomori doesn't help and I have to fix my other issues first and if that journey will continue maybe I'll find that person/them or that person/they will find me. I think one is enough for me but if it's multiple people and we're really going to be in the same page then I'll be grateful. Thinking about just one person makes me think that I need someone romantically but it depends and yeah finding love at my current situation is a mess tho I can't resist the idea sometimes, I've been lonely for so long. I maybe have I can call a couple of friends in the past and one of them I can call him my bestfriend but I think I loss him recently because of my mistake and a misunderstanding and instead of talking it out to him, I became afraid and not ready so I isolate myself and deletes my only social media that's my only way of contact to him. Besides of my faults I think he also doesn't understand me much despite us knowing each other for a long time. In recent times I want to talk to him about those things but me deleting my social media is the thing that happens. The other friend and others who came along in my life are more of a shallow aquintances or just classmates that's irrelevant now except maybe that one friend. In the past I wanted to befriend them all but I don't know how, now that maybe I know how they are now have different lives that I won't be able to enter. And me too has a different life now. Right now most of them can be said has a better life than mine because they already finish college and has jobs but I have a whole lot seperate sentiments about that. Maybe it's just like in the poem that the world will laugh with me if I'm laughing but if I'll weep, I'll weep alone. I'm keeping my door open to someone that will enter and end my loneliness but at the same time I now learned that I must be cautious and wander first for my own and maybe I can find something new along the way and also to maybe go back to things that I need to return to. But mostly about my past I need it to left behind me because most of them haunts me and it's real bad. I tried socializing online again on a different platform but the people there makes me more lonely again so now I'm trying to completely give up the idea and focus on something else meaningful. The good news is, I now think the answers are already inside of me and I just need to start executing things and stay with it, easier said than done but I'll remain to solving this puzzle. I wish we all find peace, happiness and whatever we're looking for.