Essays About Friendships: Top 6 Examples And 8 Prompts (2024)

Friendships are one of life’s greatest gifts. To write a friendship essay, make this guide your best friend with its essays about friendships plus prompts.

Every lasting relationship starts with a profound friendship. The foundations that keep meaningful friendships intact are mutual respect, love, laughter, and great conversations.Our most important friendships can support us in our most trying times. They can also influence our life for the better or, the worse, depending on the kind of friends we choose to keep.

As such, at an early age, we are encouraged to choose friends who can promote a healthy, happy and productive life. However, preserving our treasured friendships is a lifelong process that requires investments in time and effort.

6 Informative Essay Examples

1. The Limits Of Friendships by Maria Konnikova

…”[W]ithout investing the face-to-face time, we lack deeper connections to them, and the time we invest in superficial relationships comes at the expense of more profound ones.”

Social media is challenging the Dunbar number, proving that our number of casual friends runs to an average of 150. But as we expand our social base through social media, experts raise concerns about its effect on our social skills, which effectively develop through physical interaction.

2. Friendship by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness, that piques each with the presence of power and of consent in the other party.”

The influential American essayist Emerson unravels the mysteries behind the divine affinity that binds a friendship while laying down the rules and requirements needed to preserve the fellowship. To Emerson, friendship should allow a certain balance between agreement and disagreement.You might also be interested in these articles about best friends.

3. Don’t Confuse Friendships And Business Relationships by Jerry Acuff

“Being friendly in business is necessary but friendships in business aren’t. That’s an important concept. We can have a valuable business relationship without friendship. Unfortunately, many mistakenly believe that the first step to building a business relationship is to develop a friendship.”

This essay differentiates friends from business partners. Using an anecdote, the essay warns against investing too much emotion and time in building friendships with business partners or customers, as such an approach may be futile in increasing sales.

4. A 40-Year Friendship Forged By The Challenges Of Busing by Thomas Maffai

“As racial tensions mounted around them, Drummer and Linehan developed a close connection—one that bridged their own racial differences and has endured more than four decades of evolving racial dynamics within Boston’s schools. Their friendship als­o served as a public symbol of racial solidarity at a time when their students desperately needed one.”

At a time when racial discrimination is at its highest, the author highlights a friendship they built and strengthened at the height of tensions during racial desegregation. This friendship proves that powerful interracial friendships can still be forged and separate from the politics of race.

5. How People With Autism Forge Friendships by Lydia Denworth

“…15-year-old Massina Commesso worries a lot about friendship and feeling included. For much of her childhood, Massina had a neurotypical best friend… But as they entered high school, the other friend pulled away, apparently out of embarrassment over some of Massina’s behavior.”

Research debunks the myth that people with autism naturally detest interaction — evidence suggests the opposite. Now, research is shedding more light on the unique social skills of people with autism, enabling society to find ways to help them find true friendships.

6. Friendships Are Facing New Challenges Thanks To The Crazy Cost Of Living by Habiba Katsha

“The cost of living crisis is affecting nearly everyone, with petrol, food and electricity prices all rising. So understandably, it’s having an impact on our friendships too.”

People are now more reluctant to dine out with friends due to the rapidly rising living costs. Friendships are being tested as friends need to adjust to these new financial realities and be more creative in cultivating friendships through lower-cost get-togethers.

8 Topic Prompts on Essays About Friendships

1. The Importance of Friendship in Early Childhood Development

More than giving a sense of belonging, friendships help children learn to share and resolve conflicts. First, find existing research linking the capability to make and keep friends to one’s social, intellectual, and emotional development.

Then, write down what schools and households can do to reinforce children’s people skills. Here, you can also tackle how they can help children with learning, communication, or behavioral difficulties build friendships, given how their conditions interfere with their capabilities and interactions.

2. What Makes a Healthy Friendship?

As with plants, healthy friendships thrive on fertile soil. In this essay, list the qualities that make “fertile soil” and explain how these can grow the seeds of healthy friendships. Some examples include mutual respect and the setting of boundaries.

Then, write down how you should water and tend to your dearest friendships to ensure that it thrives in your garden of life. You can also discuss your healthy friendships and detail how these have unlocked the best version of yourself.

3. Friendships That Turn Into Romance

Marrying your best friend is a romance story that makes everyone fall in love. However, opening up about your feelings for your best friend is risky. For this prompt, collate stories of people who boldly made the first step in taking their friendship to a new level.

Hold interviews to gather data and ask them the biggest lesson they learned and what they can share to help others struggling with their emotions for their best friend. Also, don’t forget to cite relevant data, such as this study that shows several romantic relationships started as friendships.

4. Long-Distance Friendship with Social Media

It’s challenging to sustain a long-distance friendship. But many believe that social media has narrowed that distance through an online connection. In your essay, explain the benefits social media has offered in reinforcing long-distance friendships.

Determine if these virtual connections suffice to keep the depth of friendships. Make sure to use studies to support your argument. You can also cite studies with contrasting findings to give readers a holistic view of the situation.

5. Dealing With a Toxic Friendship

It could be heartbreaking to feel that your friend is gradually becoming a foe. In this essay, help your readers through this complicated situation with their frenemies by pointing out red flags that signal the need to sever ties with a friend. Help them assess when they should try saving the friendship and when they should walk away. Add a trivial touch to your essay by briefly explaining the origins of the term “frenemies” and what events reinforced its use.

6. Friendship in the Workplace

We all know that there is inevitable competition in the workplace. Added to this are the tensions between managers and employees. So can genuine friendships thrive in a workplace? To answer this, turn to the wealth of experience and insights of long-time managers and human resource experts.

First, describe the benefits of fostering friendships in the workplace, such as a deeper connection in working toward shared goals, as well as the impediments, such as inherent competition among colleagues. Then, dig for case studies that prove or disprove the relevance and possibility of having real friends at work.

7. Greatest Friendships in Literature

Whether it be the destructive duo like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, or the hardworking pair of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson, focus on a literary friendship that you believe is the ultimate model of friendship goals.

Narrate how the characters met and the progression of their interactions toward becoming a friendship. Then, describe the nature of the friendship and what factors keep it together.

8. Friendships According to Aristotle

In Book VIII of his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle writes about three kinds of friendships: pleasure, utility, and virtue. Dive deeper into the Greek philosopher’s mind and attempt to differentiate his three types of friendships.

Point out ideas he articulated most accurately about friendship and parts you disagree with. For one, Aristotle refutes the concept that friendships are necessarily built on likeness alone, hence his classification of friendships. Do you share his sentiments?

Read our Grammarly review before you submit your essay to make sure it is error-free! Tip: If writing an essay sounds like a lot of work, simplify it. Write a simple 5 paragraph essay instead.