During the Covid-19 lockdowns, I watched how my children responded to the fact that they couldn't see their friends in person. No face-to-face conversations. No playdates. No visiting friends. If the lockdown had happened a couple of decades earlier, any contact with people we didn't live with would have taken place via phone calls, email or letter-writing.

在新冠疫情的封城期间，我目睹了自己的孩子如何应对无法与朋友相见的问题。无法面对面聊天，无法相约游玩，无法拜访朋友。如果封城发生在几十年前，我们只能通过电话、电子邮件、写信的方式与远方的人联系。

But in the 2020s, things are different. My daughter and her friends played a game on their phones while discussing their strategy in a WhatsApp group. My son, who is yet to reach the developmental milestone of smartphone ownership, chatted with his classmates via Google Classroom. Both kids grew noticeably shy during lockdown, but their nervousness about speaking to friends they hadn't seen for a while was cured by using video-calling platforms with built-in games: after a few minutes of wordless, giggling competition in which they became unicorns and caught donuts on their virtual nose-horns, they had loosened up to discuss serious matters like Pokémon and Mario Kart.

但在21世纪20年代，情况不同了。我女儿和她的朋友们一边玩手机游戏，一边通过WhatsApp交流群探讨策略。我儿子通过“谷歌教室”与同学聊天，他还没达到拥有智能手机的年龄门槛。两个孩子在封城期间明显变腼腆了，与好久不见的朋友说话时感到拘谨，但他们通过在视频通话平台玩耍内置游戏消除了紧张感：他们在游戏中扮演独角兽，使用虚拟鼻角捕捉甜甜圈。他们在沉默寡言和阵阵欢笑中竞赛几分钟后，轻松聊起了宝可梦和马里奥赛车等重要话题。

None of this technology existed a generation ago. When I was their age, non-face-to-face, real-time interactions with friends would take place over the phone in the downstairs hallway at home, where everyone could hear what I was saying and where I could talk for no longer than 10 minutes before an agitated parent started muttering about phone bills and "blocking the line". There were no donut-catching unicorns, although I was free to challenge my wits by attempting to untangle the spiral cable that lixed the phone to the handset. Phone calls with friends were an occasional treat, not an everyday occurrence. Lockdown in my childhood would have been a very different social experience.

三十年前没有这些技术。我在他们这么大时，只能通过家中楼下走廊里的电话与远方的朋友实时交流，大家都能听见我在说什么，通话时长不能超过10分钟，否则焦虑的父母开始小声嘀咕电话费，并且“封堵线路”。当时没有捕捉甜甜圈的独角兽，但有智力挑战的自由，我试图将连接电话与听筒的螺旋电缆拆下来。给朋友打电话不是家常便饭，而是偶尔的奢侈。如果我的童年出现封城，社交体验会大不相同。


Kids may seem lost in their screens, but often they are socialising

儿童看似迷失在屏幕里，但他们往往是在社交。

How different, though? Are the differences in the ways we interact with our friends today versus a generation ago merely superficial, comparable to the difference between writing a letter to a friend on lined versus unlined paper? Or is there something about contemporary friendships that is fundamentally different to the friendships of yesteryear – and if so, how might friendship continue to change in the future?

但有多大区别？我们当今与朋友交流的方式与三十年前相比只是表面区别吗？就好比使用有横格线与无横格线的信纸给朋友写信的区别？还是说当代与以往的友谊有着根本性区别？如果有的话，未来的友谊还将发生何种变化？

It's common these days to complain that friendships aren't what they used to be. That restaurants are filled with people staring at their phones instead of talking. That selfie culture has turned us into narcissists who care more about managing our own PR than about being present with each other. That today's friendships are somehow more conditional than they were in the past, as we organise ourselves online into "echo chambers" of like-minded individuals and reject differing views. Even the word "friend" has been transformed by social media: there's a new sense in which being friends with someone just means having clicked "accept" on their friend request, without ever saying hello. There's a pervasive anxiety that true friendship is in decline, and that technology is to blame. Headlines like "The Era of Antisocial Social Media" and "Your Smartphone is Making You Stupid, Antisocial and Unhealthy" are familiar fare.

当今的人们普遍抱怨友谊不同以往。饭店里的人们盯着自己的手机看，而不是彼此交谈。自拍文化使我们变得自恋，更在意的是处理好自己的公关，而不是彼此见面。当今的友谊比以往更有赖于条件，我们在网上与志同道合的人组成“回音室”，并排斥不同的观点。甚至“朋友”这个词也被社交媒体改变了：给人的新感觉是与某人交朋友意味着在好友申请中点击接受即可，不必相互问候。人们普遍担心，技术会导致真正的友谊减少。文章标题诸如“反社会的社交媒体时代”、“你的智能手机正在使你变蠢、反社会、病态”对于我们来说已经司空见惯。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


Pessimists might wonder where this is all going to end. Perhaps we'll find ourselves in a cynical world where we interact only with people who serve us, where we don't recognise our friends without their Snapchat filters, and where we don't form genuine connections with anyone. But are these concerns really justified?

悲观者可能好奇这一切将导致什么结果。我们将可能身处一个愤世嫉俗的世界，我们只与对自己有用的人交往，只有使用Snapchat过滤器才能识别朋友，我们与任何人都不会有真正的关系，但这些担忧真的有道理吗？

Anxiety about the dystopian effects of new technology on friendship is as old as the written word. Older, in fact: for Socrates, the written word was itself part of the problem. Well over 2,000 years ago, Socrates supposedly expressed scepticism about letter-writing as a route to wisdom, favouring face-to-face interaction with peers. And at the beginning of 20th Century, concerns were raised that landline telephones would dilute interaction, or foster unhealthy social behaviours.

新技术对友谊产生反乌托邦效应，这样的忧虑古而有之，事实上比书面语更加悠久：苏格拉底认为，文字本身就是一个问题。两千多年前，据说苏格拉底对于将写信作为“智慧之路”表示质疑，他更喜欢与同侪面对面地交流。20世纪初，人们担心固定电话不利于交流，或者养成不良的社交行为。

From our contemporary perspective, in which letters or telephones are about as benign as it's possible for technology to get, such concerns strike us as quaint. Of course they don't undermine friendship. On the contrary, they promote it: letters and phone between distant friends are exactly the sorts of wholesome institutions that hand-wringers about social media are afraid will die out.

从当代的角度来看，书信或电话可能是技术所能达到最无害的结果，这种担忧令当今的我们感到奇怪。它们当然不会破坏友谊，反而能增进友谊：给远方的朋友写信或打电话，恰恰是对社交媒体感到担忧人们害怕消亡的优良习俗。


Letter-writing seems old-fashioned, but is it so different to technologically mediated social relationships?

写信看来过时了，但它与以技术为媒介的社交关系有很大区别吗？

So, does social media threaten friendship, or promote it? In a 2012 paper, Shannon Vallor considers whether the sorts of friendships people have on Facebook can be real friendships, and she concludes that yes, they can. Her argument does not rest upon new-fangled ideas about friendship. Rather, she uses Aristotle's conception, which is over 2,000 years old. For Aristotle, friendship requires having certain virtues, including those of reciprocity, empathy, self-knowledge (in the sense of understanding our place in the world, including our place in our relations with others), and participating in a shared life.

那么社交媒体会增进还是破坏友谊？在2012年的一篇论文中，莎伦·瓦勒思考人们在“脸书”上的友谊是不是真正的友谊，她得出的结论是肯定的。她的论据并非基于友谊的新奇观点，而是使用2000多年前亚里士多德的学说。在亚里士多德看来，友谊需要某种价值，包括互惠、同情、自知之明（了解自己在世界上的位置，包括与他人关系中的位置），并且参与共同的生活。

Could scepticism about social media's impact on friendship be biased? It is, after all, often expressed by people whose early friendships were not formed around social media, which may make them more likely to ignore the positives.

难道质疑社交媒体对友谊的影响是出于偏见？毕竟，质疑者往往是早期不通过社交媒体建立友谊的人，这可能使他们忽视了社交媒体的优点。

People like us

志同道合的人

Even if interacting through a screen is not destroying friendships, many people fear that the way in which we use digital technology to choose and nurture our friends encourages low-quality social connections. One such fear relates to echo chambers: those groups of like-minded individuals into which we sort ourselves, with the result that cross-fertilisation of ideas is reduced and people become more polarised and entrenched in their views. Some scholars claim that online echo chambers have serious implications for liberal democracy. But from a friendship point of view, they are nothing new. Long before the internet, people's social interactions were largely confined to like-minded others. Communities would spring up around places of religious worship, the marketplace, sports teams, workplaces and educational establishments, and along class, gender, and ethnic lines.

即便隔着屏幕交流不会破坏友谊，但许多人担心使用数字技术交友的方式会助长低质量的社交联系。其中一个担忧与“回音室”有关：我们将自己划分为志同道合的群体，结果就是思想交流变少了，人们的观点变得更加分化和根深蒂固。有学者认为，网上的“回音室”会对自由民主产生重大影响。但从友谊的角度来看，这一点也不新鲜。早在互联网出现之前，人们的社交主要局限于志同道合的人之间。人们围绕宗教场所、市场、体育团队、工作场所、教育机构组成各种团体，并以阶层、性别、种族为划分依据。

It's simply not true, then, that in the days before digitally-mediated friendship, people drew their friends from all walks of life. Perhaps we are all missing out as a result. But even if we are, the fact that the internet enables us to connect with similar people has some great benefits for friendship. It enables us to tap into support and solidarity that might not otherwise be available, either because people with the right sort of shared experiences would be difficult to find offline, or because the shared experiences in question are so intimate that we're reluctant to discuss them – a reluctance that is eased by interacting online. I rely heavily on this sort of community myself: for several years I've belonged to a private Facebook group of single mothers working in academia. The friendships I've made – which are spread across the world – along with the support I've given and received, have been hugely positive additions to my life.

在没有数码交友的时代，人们结识各行各业的朋友根本不现实。也许我们都在错过机会，但即便如此，互联网能让我们结识志同道合的人，非常有利于增进友谊。互联网能使我们获得原本可能得不到的支持和团结，因为线下很难找到有同样经历的人，或者因为涉及隐私而不愿意向对方透露同样的经历——网上交流能缓解这种不情愿。我本人非常依赖这种团体：我加入一个“脸书”私密群组已有多年，成员都是在学术界工作的单身妈妈。我从中结识的朋友给我的生活注入了强大的正能量，她们来自五湖四海，我们彼此给予对方支持。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处



Friendships forged in youth will change over a lifetime

年轻时结交的友谊将终身发生变化。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


It seems plausible that the view that echo chambers are bad for friendship is based partly in a view that friendship is – or ought to be – deeper than shared interests and experiences. We have long been moved by stories of friendships and romances between people from diverse, often conflicting, groups. Perhaps the most iconic romantic couple, Romeo and Juliet, belonged to feuding families. The friendship between Nelson Mandela, while imprisoned for conspiring to overthrow South Africa's apartheid government, and a young, initially pro-apartheid, white prison guard captured the public's attention and was the focus of a film, Goodbye Bafana. In 2014, Arab-American journalist Sulome Anderson tweeted a photo of herself kissing her Jewish boyfriend, Jeremy, while holding a sign reading "Jews and Arabs REFUSE to be ENEMIES". The photo went viral.

“回音室”不利于友谊的论调在某种程度上源于一种观念，即友谊能够并应该超越共同的喜好和经历，这不无道理。我们一直被这种故事所打动：来自不同且往往对立群体的人们成为朋友或彼此相爱。最具代表性的情侣可能是罗密欧与朱丽叶，两人出身于世仇家族。纳尔逊·曼德拉因密谋推翻南非种族隔离政府而入狱，他与最初支持种族隔离的年轻白种人的友谊引起了世人的关注，并成为电影《再见巴法纳》的焦点。2014年，阿拉伯裔美国记者苏洛姆·安德森在“推特”上发表一张她与犹太男朋友杰里米亲吻的照片，同时举着一个牌子写道：“犹太人与阿拉伯人拒绝成为敌人”，这张照片当时火了。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


These examples illustrate that we are captivated by the idea of looking beyond our friends' (perhaps unpalatable) views and interests, and loving the person behind them. It's certainly true that the best friendships don't stand or fall with shared interests. If you initially connected with your oldest friend over your shared love of 90s American boy bands but parted ways when one of you lost interest in Boyz II Men, it would be hard not to conclude that your friendship didn't run very deep. But this doesn't entail that there is anything wrong with seeking out connections based on shared interests. A deep, loving, supportive friendship of many years is not made any less deep, loving, and supportive because the friends in question initially connected through their boy band obsession.

这些事例表明，我们痴迷于这种观念：朋友之间应该超越（可能令人难以接受的）观点和喜好，并且爱屋及乌。最牢固的友谊确实不因共同的喜好而起伏不定，如果你跟老朋友最初是因为共同喜爱九十年代的美国男孩乐队而结识，但由于其中一人不再喜欢Boyz II Men乐队而分道扬镳，那就难免得出你们的友谊不够深厚的结论，但并不意味着基于共同的喜好而相互结识有什么不妥。一份多年来深厚、友爱、互助的友谊，不会因为相识之初共同痴迷的男孩乐队，而变得不再深厚、友爱、互助。

Friendships, friendships, everywhere …

友谊，友谊，无处不在……

What about the idea that we now live in a world in which friendship is debased? In which social media encourage us to value quantity over quality, and to project images of glossy perfection at the expense of forming deep, intimate connections?

我们应该如何看待这种观点：我们当今所处的时代不再重视友谊，社交媒体鼓励我们重视数量而非质量，展现光鲜亮丽的形象，牺牲深厚亲密的关系。

The concern that quantity of friendships comes at the expense of quality is – like the other concerns we've discussed so far – not at all new. In an essay entitled "On Having Many Friends", the 1st-century Greek philosopher Plutarch wrote:

追求朋友的数量会牺牲质量——这种担忧就像我们至今探讨的其他问题——一点也不新鲜。在一篇题为《论拥有许多朋友》的文章中，1世纪的希腊哲学家普鲁塔克写道：

"What then is the coin of friendship? It is goodwill and graciousness combined with virtue, then which nature has nothing more rare. It follows, then, that a strong mutual friendship with many persons is impossible, but, just as rivers whose waters are divided among branches and channels flow weak and thin, so affection, naturally strong in a soul, if portioned out among many persons become utterly enfeebled."

“那么友谊的价值是什么？它融合了友善、亲切、美德，乃大自然中最宝贵的东西。所以与许多人建立牢固的友谊是不可能的，但恰如河水分成许多支流和水渠，水流会变得细弱。如果灵魂与生俱来的强烈感情被分给许多人，势必变得淡薄”。

A couple of millennia later, Abba sang, "Facing 20,000 of your friends / How can anyone be so lonely?" in their 1980 single, "Super Trouper". And in 2009, Eoghan Quigg – a former contestant on the British talent show The X Factor – released a single, "28,000 Friends", with the lines, "You and your 28,000 friends / YouTube, Facebook, Myspace, IM" and "How does it feel to be alone? / So many friends that you don't know".

几千年后，阿巴乐队（ABBA）在单曲《超级巨星》中唱道：“面对两万个朋友/怎会有如此孤独的人”？2009年，奥恩·奎格——英国达人秀《X音素》的前参赛者——推出单曲《28000个朋友》，歌词写道：“你和你的28000个朋友/油管、脸书、Myspace、IM”，“独自一人的感觉如何/那么多你不认识的朋友”。


Is it possible to have more than 150 friends?

朋友的数量可能超过150人吗？

According to our digital timescales, Quigg's reference to Myspace is its own brand of ancient – but we might wonder whether the technology that has emerged over the past couple of decades encourages us to spread our friendships more thinly than ever. Does Quigg have more reason to gripe about this than Plutarch did? The answer is that, while empirical evidence supports the claim that we are incapable of having a great many close friendships, it’s far from clear that social media's capacity to multiply our social connections is reducing the quality of our friendships.

按照数码时代的时间尺度，奎格提到的Myspace是老字号了，但我们可能好奇几十年来出现的技术是否导致了友谊比以往更加淡薄？奎格是否比普鲁塔克更有理由抱怨这一点？答案是尽管经验性证据表明我们无法结交大量的亲密朋友，但远远不能证明社交媒体使我们的社交联系翻倍的能力会降低友谊的质量。

The anthropologist Robin Dunbar studied social groups over the centuries and found that the number of stable social connections that individuals can maintain has remained fairly constant, at roughly 150. This figure – which has come to be known as Dunbar’s Number – denotes, more or less, "the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar". There are subdivisions within this.

人类学家罗宾·邓巴研究了几百年来的社会群体，他发现个人维持稳定的社交联系的数量非常稳定，大约150个。这就是著名的“邓巴数字”，大体上意味着“如果你在酒吧里偶然遇见他们，不请自来地跟他们喝一杯而不会感到尴尬的人数”。这其中还有细分群体。

We each tend to have three to five people who constitute "the small nucleus of really good friends to whom you go in times of trouble", and a "sympathy group" of 12-15 people "whose death tomorrow would leave you distraught" – but, Dunbar argues, we simply lack the cognitive capacity to inflate these groups. "[I]f a new person comes into your life," Dunbar explains, "someone has to drop down into the next level to make room for them". Since the number of friends we can have is limited by our cognitive capacity, not even the ease of making online connections can enable us to expand it. Commenting on social media, Dunbar remarks that "there is an issue about what really counts as a friend". Those who have very large numbers – that's to say, larger than about 200 – invariably know little or nothing about the individuals on their list," he adds.

我们每个人通常有由三五个人组成的“患难与共的密友小核心”，以及由12-15人组成的“同情圈子”，与他们生死离别会让我们感到痛苦——但邓巴指出，我们缺少扩大这些群体的认知能力。“如果一名新人走入我们的生活”，邓巴解释道，“就必须有人降低级别，从而为他们腾出位置”。由于我们结交朋友的数量受到认知能力的限制，即便是轻而易举的网络社交也无法扩大这个数字。邓巴在评论社交媒体时指出：“问题是什么才算真正的朋友”。有些人的朋友数量非常多——即大概200人以上——他们始终对名单上的这些人知之甚少”，他补充道。

The fact that Dunbar's Number is – as Dunbar sees it – limited by our cognitive capacities points to a possible way in which friendship might look different in the future. Cognitive capacities – including attention, memory, perception, and decision-making – relate to the mental processing of information. We use various strategies and tools to help us improve these capacities. We drink coffee to help us focus, wear glasses to improve our vision, write lists to help us remember things, and so on. The improvements we make as a result are relatively modest, and often short-lived. However, many believe that, in the near future, we will be able to make far more drastic improvements to our cognitive capacities using technologies like drugs, transcranial electrical stimulation, brain implants, and genetic engineering. The results could see human cognitive capacities far exceed anything we've seen before.

正如邓巴所说的，邓巴数字受到我们认知能力的限制，这预示着未来的友谊可能出现何种变化。认知能力——包括注意力、记忆力、感知力、决策力——关系到大脑的信息处理。我们运用各种策略和工具来提升这些能力，我们喝咖啡有助于聚精会神，戴眼镜有助于改善视力，写备忘录有助于记住事情等等。最终的提升幅度相对不大，而且往往是短暂的。但许多人认为在不远的未来，利用药物、经颅电刺激、大脑植入、基因工程等技术，我们的认知能力将得到突飞猛进的提升。我们最终可能看到，人类的认知能力远远超过我们以前见过的任何东西。

In that case, perhaps we might be able to maintain close friendships with significantly more people. But given that even cognitively enhanced versions of ourselves would be constrained by the number of hours we have for socialising, increasing our number of close friends would need to involve wringing more intimacy from the time we spend with each friend. Or, it could be that a cognitively enhanced world would come with other changes, such as a reduction in working hours, which could free up more time for friends.

在这种情况下，也许我们能够与更多的人保持亲密友谊。但即使认知能力增强了，我们的社交时间也是有限的，增加亲密朋友的数量需要我们在与每位朋友的交往时间里强求更多的亲近感。人类认知能力的增强可能带来其他变化，例如工作时间有所减少，这样可以有更多的时间交朋友。

On the other hand, even with the cognitive capacity to have more close friendships, perhaps many would value having fewer friends. Romantic relationships provide an analogy: having the capacity to maintain multiple partners apparently does not result in most people wanting to live non-monogamously. So, a cognitively enhanced future of friendship might end up looking different to the way friendship looks now – but equally, it might not.

另一方面，即使我们具备了结交更多亲密朋友的认知能力，许多人可能看重朋友宜少不宜多。就拿恋爱关系来说：有能力维持多个伴侣，并不意味着大多数人愿意接受非一夫一妻制的生活。所以在认知能力增强的未来，友谊可能看起来与现在有所不同——但也可能不会。


Could technological and cognitive change in the future allow us to maintain more friendships?

在未来，技术和认知能力的变化能使我们维系更多的友谊吗？

It might seem that, by encouraging us to use the term "friend" to refer to hundreds or even thousands of people with whom we have only very superficial connections, social media is (to use Plutarch’'s metaphor) duing the coin of friendship. Facebook friends are, after all, often friends in name only – especially for those users whose friends run into the hundreds or thousands. But using "friend" to refer to people one does not know particularly well is nothing new. In her study of social connections in 18th-Century England, Naomi Tadmor explains that a few centuries ago, a person would count as friends not only those with whom they had relatively intimate emotional relationships, but also family, household staff, employers, and so on. She points to the term "Society of Friends" – still used to today as a term for Quakers – as an example of this wider use of the term.

社交媒体（以普鲁塔克的比喻）似乎在使友谊贬值，因为它鼓励我们使用“朋友”这个字眼称呼千百个与我们只有肤浅关系的人。毕竟，“脸书”好友往往只是名义上的朋友——尤其拥有成百上千好友的用户。但是，使用“朋友”称呼不太熟悉的人并不是新鲜事。娜奥米·塔德莫尔研究过18世纪英国的社交关系，她阐述了几个世纪以前，人们眼中的朋友不只是与他们的情感关系相对密切的人，还包括亲属、家庭佣工、雇主等等。她指出“公谊会”这个词——至今仍是“贵格会”的别名——就是“朋友”这个词用途广泛的例证。

Despite changes over the years in whether certain people with whom we have relatively loose social connections count as friends, there has remained a stable core. The handful of people who constitute Dunbar’s "small nucleus" and the dozen or so who make up the "sympathy group" have always counted as friends. But changes in our views about what we owe our friends hint at what might become of these smaller, intimate groups. Consider our views about loyalty. It's good to be loyal to our friends – but in professional contexts, we use terms like "cronyism" and "nepotism" to condemn loyalty to friends. Tadmor explains that things were different in the past. In the 18th Century, serving one's friends was viewed as a virtue, even in politics. Just as giving one's friends a shoo-in for a job in politics was virtuous three centuries ago but obxtionable today, perhaps some practices that today count as virtuous will one day be viewed as obxtionable. Today, nobody raises an eyebrow at a lawyer who gives out free advice to friends (but not strangers) or a hairdresser who styles his friends' hair (but not strangers' hair) for free. Providing strangers, free of charge, with the sort of help that they would otherwise have to pay for is kind, but not expected or required. Things might change in the future. Perhaps giving friends the benefit of one's skills while denying it to strangers will be viewed as cronyism in the centuries to come.

尽管多年来，社交关系相对疏远的人能否算是朋友发生了变化，但仍然存在稳定的核心。构成邓巴“小核心”的几个人和构成“同情圈子”的十几个人一直算作朋友。但我们对于亏欠朋友什么的看法有所改变，这预示着这些亲密的小圈子可能发生怎样的变化。想一想我们对于忠诚的看法，对朋友忠诚是优点——但在专业背景下，我们使用“任人唯亲”和“裙带关系”这些字眼谴责对朋友的忠诚。塔德莫尔指出，过去的情况并非如此。在18世纪，为朋友效劳是一种美德，甚至包括政治。正如三个世纪前，帮助朋友稳操胜券地赢得政治职位是美德，如今却令人反感。当今的某些做法可能被视为美德，有朝一日会令人反感。如今，律师为朋友而非陌生人提供免费的法律咨询，或者发型师为朋友而非陌生人免费设计发型，不会有人对此感到不满。这些情况可能发生改变，也许在未来的几个世纪里，让朋友而非陌生人受益于自己的技能会视为任人唯亲。

What would a future world with different ideas about what we owe to our friends look like? Well, probably not that different to today's world. It's also not like contemporary friendship is the same thing all over the globe. Friendships in individualist cultures – typical of English-speaking countries and much of Western Europe – differs in several important ways from friendships in Arab, East Asian, African, and Latin American countries where there is a more collectivist culture. For example, reciprocity between friends is typically valued more in individualist than in collectivist cultures.

在未来的世界，关于亏欠朋友什么的观念将发生改变，那样的世界将是什么样子？与当今世界的差别可能没那么大。在同一时代背景下，世界各地的友谊并不一样。个人主义文化中的友谊——典型的是讲英语的国家和大多数西欧国家——与盛行集体主义文化的阿拉伯、东亚、非洲、拉丁美洲国家的友谊存在多方面的显著差异。相比集体主义文化，个人主义文化通常更重视朋友之间的互惠互利。

Individualists don't like to be indebted to friends by not returning favours; collectivists don't view such interactions in terms of favours and instead view those who resist accepting help from friends as aloof and egotistical. Behaviour between friends that, in individualist cultures, is seen as inappropriately interfering – like correcting a friend's class notes – is deemed considerate and caring in collectivist cultures. Those in collectivist cultures tend to be confident that their close friendships will endure without nurturing by saying positive things; as a result, they speak to their friends with a frankness that would be viewed as cold in individualist cultures. As the psychologist Roger Baumgarte – from whose survey of cross-cultural friendship research I've drawn these observations – remarks, these cultural differences reveal that even what it means to be a close friend varies by culture.

个人主义者不愿意欠朋友人情，集体主义者不以互惠的角度看待这种交往，而是认为不接受朋友的帮助是高冷和傲慢的表现。在个人主义文化中被视为朋友的不当干涉的——比如纠正朋友的课堂笔记——在集体主义文化中被视为体贴与关怀。在集体主义文化中，人们通常相信亲密友谊不需要说好听的话也能长久，所以他们对朋友直言不讳，但在个人主义文化中会被视为冷漠。正如心理学家罗杰·鲍姆加特所言——我从他的跨文化友谊研究概论中得出这些观察结果——这些文化差异表明，就连密友的涵义在不同的文化里也有区别。

The future of friendship

友谊的未来

What should be our lesson from all this? The mediums and technologies that enable friendship may change, but much stays the same. The phonecalls and handwritten letters of a few decades ago might seem more wholesome than today's WhatsApp texts, but their function is similar. This can be jarring: when I see my children poring over their iPads, I have to remind myself that although they may look withdrawn and solitary, most of their screen time in fact centres around interacting with friends. Tempting as it is to lock away their electronics forever and send them outside with a skipping rope, doing that would likely result in their being excluded from an important community – and while spending every waking hour hunched over a smartphone is not a recipe for a fulfilling life, neither is spending every waking moment writing letters. The kids are all right.

我们能从这一切当中得到什么启示？人们用来建立友谊的媒介和技术可能会变，但许多东西不会变。几十年前的打电话和写信看似比当今的WhatsApp文本信息更健康，但它们的功能大同小异。这可能令人感到不安：当我看见自己的孩子专心致志地盯着iPad时，我只能提醒自己：尽管他们看起来可能沉默寡言和孤僻，但其实盯着屏幕的大部分时间都在跟朋友互动。父母恨不得把他们的电子产品永远锁起来，让他们拿着跳绳去户外活动，这样做可能使他们无法融入重要的群体——尽管整天埋头看智能手机无法让生活变得充实，但整天写信也不是办法。孩子们安然无恙。