囧研究 25歲開始朋友變少

Scientists say they've pinpointed the time in our lives when we start losing friends, rather than making new ones, by looking at the phone data of some 3.2 million Europeans. It looks like 25 is the watershed age for making new relationships.

科學家們研究了歐洲320萬人的手機數據，稱已能確定人們是從生命中的哪一刻開始失去友人、而非去結交新朋友。似乎25歲起是結交新朋友的分水嶺。

While this isn't a precise measurement of friendships, it does suggest that this is the stage in life when our social circles are at their largest, say researchers from the Aalto University School of Science in Finland and the University of Oxford in the UK.

儘管這並不能精確衡量友誼，卻也的確表明，在人生這一階段我們的社交圈是最龐大的，芬蘭阿爾託大學和英國牛津大學的研究者如是說。

From then on, we start losing contact with people, as children and careers start to put pressure on our time. We begin dropping friends for the rest of our lives, although there is a small plateau at the age of 45 to 55 years old.

自此，我們便與人開始失去聯繫，因爲孩子和事業讓我們時間緊迫。接下來的人生階段，我們不斷失去朋友，儘管到45至55歲會有這一趨勢會短時間暫緩。

Interestingly, at younger ages, men have more friends than women, but from the age of 39 upwards, that trend is reversed.

有意思的是，年輕時，男性的朋友數多於女性，但自39歲起，這一趨勢發生逆轉。

The researchers suggest that it's possible that women may interact with their own close family members more than men do, for the purposes of things like keeping other family members updated on children's activities.

專家指出，可能女性與其家庭成員往來更密切，因爲要及時瞭解交流孩子們的近況。

The research serves as a reminder that all the modern tech we use to keep in touch with our friends and family has another. It's giving researchers a vast treasure trove of data to study. Females tend to have a close-knit pack of girlfriends, whereas males have a gang of guys to hang out with.

研究提醒我們，現代科技使得我們和親朋好友聯繫更密切;研究也提供了珍貴的數據資料。女性似乎有一羣關係要好的閨蜜，而男性則有一幫一起玩的夥伴。

The researchers say the differences between cultures will probably lie in the timing of peaks and transitions, rather than in the overall patterns themselves.

研究人員稱，不同文化間的差異基本在於友人人數達到巔峯的時段和轉折點，而非其整體模式有變化。