I saw an old friend recently – the kind you’ve known for so long that you clear a whole day for them, as you might a family member. We laughed and laughed like we were teenagers again, and drank martinis before lunch, and it felt almost like it always did when we were young, except we could afford better than cheap cider, and he owns a house and I’m someone’s mother.

Another old friend – one I’ve known even longer, since I was six – described me and the other girls who made up our little group as “fake siblings”. That is how lifelong friendships feel. There’s an easiness and acceptance that comes with longstanding intimacy. You know each other’s secrets, you’ve been inside each other’s parents’ houses, shared beds and cigarettes, witnessed heartbreak and foolishness, tears and whiteys, before the more serious stuff piles up: weddings, births, illnesses, life crises, deaths. You talk about the serious stuff, of course (there has always been some serious stuff, but teenage friendships often provide a refuge from it), but when you need it that old friendship is a portal, transporting many of us to a time of lightness and freedom that is otherwise hard to access.

I don’t know where I’d be without these friendships, which is why it makes me sad to read that young people today aren’t making them, or at least not in the same way. According to a new report from the Institute for Public Policy Research........

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