As your teen gets older, you might notice their friends becoming a bigger part of their daily life. This can feel like a big change, but it’s a completely normal part of growing up.
Teen friendships and mental health are closely linked, and your teen’s friendships can support their well-being or become a source of distress.
Knowing the difference between a healthy friendship and an unhealthy one can help you identify when something isn’t quite right. It can also help you recognize when your teen might need more support.
With this in mind, this page covers:
First, it’s worth remembering that there’s no single blueprint for a healthy friendship. Some teens stay close to a single best friend they’ve known since childhood, while others might move between a few different groups. Both can be perfectly healthy.
Teen friendship dynamics often vary from group to group, but healthy teen friendships share a few core qualities. In a healthy friendship, your teen can:[1]
Of course, this doesn’t mean a healthy friendship is always smooth sailing, and the occasional falling-out is often part of healthy human relationships. The benefit comes from learning to work through those ups and downs, and that skill can bring stability to your teen’s relationships throughout their life.
As a parent, you may sometimes underestimate how important your teen’s friends are to them. When you think back to your own teen years, you’ll probably remember how much your friends meant to you at the time.
In adult life, we often drift away from our earlier friendships as we get busy with careers, families, and other responsibilities. That’s not to say those relationships weren’t of any value to you, though.
To your teen, their friendships are some of the most essential and meaningful relationships in their life.
Adolescent friendships are, in many ways, a practice ground for adult life. Every time your teen comforts a friend after a bad day or works through a disagreement with them, they’re building skills they’ll rely on for years to come.
This is a key part of teenage social development, and research suggests the empathy teens build in close friendships carries over into their adult relationships.[2]
Friends can also introduce each other to new interests that could last a lifetime and enrich your child’s life.
Feeling accepted is at the heart of teen social belonging, and friends who offer acceptance and shared experiences can form bonds that last.
Social connection for teens extends beyond friendship and can support mental health. The CDC states that when young people feel connected at school, that feeling helps protect them from poor mental health and risky behaviors.[3]
Research on teen friendships and mental health highlights the value of close and supportive relationships. One study found that teens with stronger close friendships showed rising self-worth and falling anxiety and depression symptoms by early adulthood.[4]
The most important part was the strength of those close friendships rather than popularity.[4] That may be reassuring to parents of quieter teens, as one or two friends can be enough to keep your child happy and healthy.
Peer pressure often gets a bad name, but it can have positive aspects too. For example, a friend who’s studying hard or checks in after a tough day can encourage your teen to do the same.
In one experiment, teens became more willing to help others after seeing their peers do the same. That’s an indication that adolescent peer influence can be a real force for good.[5]
Just as healthy friendships share certain qualities, unhealthy friendships also have their own set of warning signs. Some are easy to spot, especially if your teen is constantly getting into trouble with their friends, but others can form slowly and often go unnoticed.
A friendship may be unhealthy if your teen:[1]
One of these on its own doesn’t automatically mean a friendship is toxic, and many teenage friendship problems pass with time. It’s when these signs keep happening that they become a concern.
Mission Prep is here to help you or your loved one take the next steps towards an improved mental well-being.
The relationship between teen friendships and mental health can become concerning when friendships regularly cause stress rather than provide support.
One experiment showed that being excluded during a simple online game lowered the mood of teenage girls and raised anxiety in the youngest group, while adult women showed no change.[6]
These findings suggest that while being left out hurts at any age, adolescent girls may be particularly sensitive to exclusion in this type of social situation.
When group exclusion keeps happening, it can turn into loneliness, which research has closely linked with friendship problems, as well as mental health difficulties in young people.[7]
We mentioned earlier that adolescent peer influence can be beneficial in certain situations, but there’s also a negative side we’re all aware of. Many teens give in to peer pressure because they want to fit in and worry about being left out if they don’t, but by doing so regularly, they’re leaving themselves exposed to negative effects.
In one study, adolescents described peer pressure, bullying, and social exclusion as negative influences on their mental health.[8]
In a one-sided friendship, your teen is always the one reaching out or offering a shoulder to cry on, while the other person rarely returns the effort. If this type of teen friendship dynamic continues, it can start to affect your teen’s mental health. One study suggested that one-sided friendships may be linked with more social anxiety in teens.[9]
People often assume that bullying comes from someone your teen isn’t friends with, but sometimes the hurt comes from inside the friend group itself. Across 18 long-term studies, being mistreated by peers predicted later anxiety and depression. Those struggles were also linked with being mistreated again later on.[10]
Friendship ups and downs are a normal part of growing up, so it can be hard to know when to step in. The bigger concern is when a difficult friendship, or the lack of one, starts to affect how your teen feels and copes day-to-day.
It may be time to look for support if your teen is:[11]
Of course, all teens have off days when symptoms similar to these can present themselves. But if these symptoms last for weeks, alongside other changes in how your teen acts, it’s something worth speaking about with a mental health professional.
For some teens, the difficulty goes the other way, when an existing, undiagnosed neurodevelopmental or mental health condition can make friendships harder to build and maintain. Peer relationships in teens can be affected by conditions such as:
Recognizing any of these in your teen doesn’t mean they’ll always struggle with friendships, and a professional assessment can help get to the root of what’s happening.
Mission Prep provides treatment for teens experiencing various mental health conditions. Mental Health support is a phone call away – call 866-901-4047 to learn about your treatment options.
See our residences in Southern California’s Los Angeles & San Diego areas.
Take a look at our Minneapolis-St. Paul area homes in Hennepin County.
View our facilities in Loudoun County, VA within the DC metro area.
Whether a difficult friendship has affected your teen’s mental health or a mental health condition is making friendships harder, supportive treatment can help with both. By addressing the underlying cause, it can become easier for your teen to build and keep healthy friendships.
At Mission Prep Teen Treatment, we start with a thorough assessment to understand what could be causing the social challenges your teen is facing. From there, we offer tailored treatment programs based on the level of care your teen could benefit from.
Our team of expert therapists uses evidence-based approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which can help teens not only improve mental health symptoms, but also improve social functioning and peer relationships.[15]
Whether your teen could benefit from residential treatment at one of our locations or something more flexible, like an outpatient mental health program delivered virtually, our team can help. Mission Prep Teen Treatment accepts insurance and is in-network with most major providers. We are happy to help you check your insurance coverage for mental health care.
Learn more about our admissions process online or call 866-901-4047 to speak with a caring member of our team who can answer any questions you might have. Reach out for a free, no-obligation conversation.
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