Age

Simply put, I'd say no. I think that any two ages can be friends, even in your example I'm 20 in less than a month and I think I might be able to class some 5-year old girls as my friends. Obviously it's a different type of friend to people my own age, I wouldn't treat them the same or do the same things with them but that doesn't mean they're not my friend. Likewise I'm friends with some people 60+, again I wouldn't do the same with them as with my other friends but I could still happily class them as a friend. I don't think age should be an issue with who you get along with and become good friends with.

In school I had a group of friends which pretty much spanned the entire age range of people in the school, I think there was somebody from every single year group. That was really nice and I enjoyed being part of it. We all got along and had a good time together, nobody was left out. The difference in maturity between the ages was sometimes noticeable but it never was a big problem. So yeah, I think that age doesn't matter at all when it comes to friends.

 

The only issue I see with that is that adults could look at the adult who's friends with kids as perverted or a sexual predator, especially if it's a, say, 20-year-old woman who's friends with a five-year-old boy or vice-versa.

 

Never age in itself, but I dare flaunt with the experience that may come with it (though never for the sake of it).

 

Sorry to ask, but what exactly do you mean by that?

 

I'd like to think that I likely have a better grasp of how people think than someone who is much younger than me. That being said, I would never use those extra years of experience as an argument unless I actually did have experiences with the matter at hand.

 

Midny had actually addressed that:

It's possible to be friends with really young and really old people, but there are clear boundaries in the friendship. You wouldn't invite a five year old or a 70 year old out clubbing, nor would you sit with a friend your age and watch Barney and play pretend games (at least, you'd be somewhat hard pressed to for the latter :b). The point is, it is a legitimate friendship, but it's a different type to the one you would likely have with people your own age. This type of friendship is seen with Babysitters/Kids, Mentors/Mentees, the Senpai/Kouhai thing -- the parties are friends, but there are defined roles that each fit in.

 

For me, I do not think that age matters, because I make a lot of friends who are older and younger than my age group.

As of this school year, I made some friends from the Freshmen and Sophomore class, and I would just talk to any of them when I have the chance.

 

Not really. I only tend to remind to others how old am i because there are people who still find it funny or whatever to treat me like a child since i look way younger than i am. I mean, i am 25 and people judging by my appearance think i am twenty, twenty one and treat me appropriately, which i find rather demeaning (especially when you are in the arts business). But again no, i have no reason to rub my age to anyone''s face. My friends call me grandpa since i am the oldest so...

 

Age and friends don't matter to me. I mean, sure, my class is a lot of 16 and 17 year olds and I'm 18, but I find it actually good to befriend some older people, if they're the right people. That's how I feel.

 

Most people younger than me are smarter than me, so :L

Yeah, the thing is age is only a potential indicator of experience; there are plenty of adults who've spent most of their years learning nothing and thinking they know everything. And it is entirely possible to unlearn many important life lessons. I wouldn't use it to prove superiority or win an argument, and I'd rarely use it as a joke. Tends to make the recipient feel bad, which is kinda... not the purpose of a joke?

 

Not really. I usually jest about how old I am around my friends ... of course a lot of them are plenty older than I am. They just laugh about it and we carry on. The only time I use my seniority is to call a kid out on something completely and totally idiotic. Something I know wouldn't work but they 'know' would. I've been proven wrong on occasion but if it takes me 'flaunting' my age to you to keep you from doing something stupid and hurting yourself then so be it.

Other than that I really don't even think about my age .... I hate to think about how old I'm getting -_-

EDIT: Was pointed out that I've already posted. Seeing as nothing really contradicts and this stands to further explain my ideals on the matter I seen no reason to do anything about this post.

 

So what's an example of something a 20-year-old and a five-year-old could do that aren't family?

Also, how far does the difference go? Like you say, you wouldn't take a 70-year-old clubbing, but in my senior year at the high school when I was 19 for a short time and then 20, I happened to get into sexual discussions with some of my friends that were 14 and 15, with them being the ones that brought them up, which is something I got into then with friends more around my age (17-18). (I say 17 to 18 because that's what most people are in their senior year.)

The way I look at that is that teenagers and young adults have pretty much the same interests, such as video games.

 

If we work under the assumption the 5 year old is being babysat by the 20 year old, the 20 year old would be in a role where they'd play games with the 5 year old, take care of their needs (food, injuries, etc) and all around be there to supervise the kid. If they were a mentor or a scout leader or anything of the sort, they'd primarily focus on interacting with the kid like that and giving them guidance when/where needed.

The difference depends on what developmental level the individuals in question are at.

Erikson's Stages of Psychological Development

• Hope (Birth - 1 Year)
• Will ("Terrible 2's)
• Purpose (3 - 5)
• Competence (6 - 11*)
• Fidelity (12 - 19*)
• Love (20 - 40*)
• Care (45 - 65)
• Wisdom (66 - Death)

Mind you, these are just general age ranges & it can very much be different on a person to person basis. For your example, you andthose friends you mentioned are within the Fidelity stage. It's a stage of discovering your identity ("who am I, what do I wanna be" and all that stuff). It's also a stage of great confusion; you're beginning to expand your horizons out more and try new things while dealing with those consequences. Things like partying, drinking, sexual interactions and so on are happen here in spades. It's very much an age of trial and error, to seek knowledge on these foreign things and be able to make your mistakes and learn from them. You and your friends were within this stage, so it's pretty expected that topics like that are bound to come up.


* There are, however, boundaries (imo) to these. If you're a senior in high school and dating a 12 year old, you are on way opposite ends of that stage of development. Where the 12 year old is beginning entry the stage, the senior has had those experiences and is about to move onto a new chapter/stage in life. The developmental differences there are very different, and while a casual friendship based on talking and occasionally hanging out is cool, anything more than that (like bringing them to parties and whatever), is crossing a line. Similarly, a 6 year old and an 11 year old or a 20 year old and a 40 year old, who is typically very much established in life and settled, being more than casual friends doesn't really sit to right with me.

 

Yup. There are definitely boundaries. I also think it depends on the children and parents as well. For example, I've hung out with my 16-year-old friend twice now at my house, and he has a pretty cool mother!

The age difference between us is six years (and the age difference in your example is five years), give or take months (I'm 22, and I'll be 23 on November 8, 2014, and he's 16 and will be 17 on April 14, 2014), and when I talked about this subject with my mom, she said many parents would look at this weird: "What's a 22-year-old doing hanging out with a 16-year-old?" While I personally think there's nothing wrong with it, I could understand that thinking a little more if it were opposite genders, but if the two people hanging out are of the same gender, just different ages, then I really don't see a problem with it -- within reason, of course, going back to your boundaries comment.

 

It is the other way around, really. Many people have thought of me as older until the discovery of my actual age, and the like. In this way it is certainly true that we cannot explicitly link age to our expectations of a person beyond certain generalizations. I am friends with a good deal of people both quite older and quite younger than me, and their experiences offer refreshingly different viewpoints on things as well. Suffice to say these friendships have different social boundaries, as was said, but there is a core root of experience tying them together. You befriend the individual, not the age.

 

I don't think it matters. I have a tight new circle of friends, quite a few of them are just entering college, others are far older than I am in their 30s, some even older than that (I'm 25).

And as a teacher of young children I'm their bestest friend ever by proxy.

Now, do I rub my age in others' faces? Never. It's usually rubbed in my face, especially if I'm unlucky enough to be the youngest in the group.

 

I used to rub my age in peoples faces I guess when I was younger but I was the youngest of the people within my class, now I'm 16 I don't really bother because there's no point I guess I stopped caring about my birthdays as well to be honest