RE: I'll Be There For You Why our friends are more important than ever

THE FRIENDSHIP FILES

- Rebecca Gao

Friendships are, quite literally, life-saving. Studies show that people with strong social relationships increase their odds of survival by 50 percent. And the results hold regardless of the person’s age, gender, health status, and cause of death. Study after study shows that social connectedness not only generates emotional well-being, it has real physical benefits, too: it boosts our immune and cardiovascular systems, lowers the risk of depression and dementia and improves our stress responses and the quality of our sleep. ¶ These are across-the-board benefits; they don’t discriminate based on the sort of friendship you have. And friendship can look very different, as the women in these pages show—it might have developed in childhood or in an office cubicle; it can last generations or cross generations; it can be kept all in the family. ¶ Good friends are the antidote to the stresses of daily life, and the pandemic has made these relationships feel more important than ever. They deserve our attention and special care. After all, we get by with (more than) a little help from our friends.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Kiran Rai, Baljit Singh, Gagan Bassi, Rupi Kaur, Bali Bassi and Keerat Kaur (previous page)