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Divya met her best friend when she was just 4 years old.

They’ve been through all the phases of childhood and adolescence together, and more than 14 years later, they’re still incredibly close, Divya told me. They don’t see each other every day, but whenever they get together, it’s like no time has passed.

“Every time I look back to that particular friendship, I just feel amazed, and I feel like it’s an achievement in itself,” the 19-year-old said.

Having a friend like Divya’s can be a joy for kids, just as it can be for adults. “We all would like to have somebody who is there for us through thick and thin, and who knows us deeply and loves us anyway,” said Eileen Kennedy-Moore, a clinical psychologist and host of the podcast Kids Ask Dr. Friendtastic. Kids with best friends tend to be less anxious, better able to handle rejection and bullying, and even more engaged in school, Kennedy-Moore said.

But when I reached out to a group of contributors from the podcast This Teenage Life (Divya among them) to talk about friendship, one of the first topics that came up was pressure. Adults and other kids alike send the message that everyone needs a best friend, or that friendship should look a certain way, the teens told me. Even Divya gets worried sometimes when she sees other teens post on social media about talking to their best friends every day. She starts to worry: “Are we even best friends or not?”

The good news is that kids don’t need a certain kind of best-friendship, or even a best friend at all. “What kids need is a repertoire of anchors,” people who “hold you up, that are there for you,” said Michele Borba, an educational psychologist and author of the book Thrivers: The Surprising Reasons Why Some Kids Struggle and........

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