Age gaps in friendships

Offline I would definitely feel less easy about hanging around kids.

But ONLINE? I don't think anything of it.

I'm pretty much a child online, myself. I'm basically hanging around people who match the age I feel I am. lol
 
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Friend's can really be any age for me.. Now if you are more than 15 years older than me or younger than 5 years of me then we won't hang out together, but if we happen to be at the same place I am going to treat anyone like my friend. Does that even make sense? I really hope so.. Now for dating I am only going to date people who are less than two years younger than me and people who are less than five years older than me.
 
I'm not all that bothered by age, getting along well and sharing common interests is really all I need to be friends with someone. Most of the friends I had growing up were either significantly older than me, or significantly younger. Nowadays, I don't even know the ages of most of my friends, since they're all online and it's not a subject that pops up in conversation all too often.
 
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Nowadays, I don't even know the ages of most of my friends, since they're all online and it's not a subject that pops up in conversation all too often.

^ And this thread topic made me think about this a lot.

Because, I mean, I feel the same way. People's ages aren't obviously visible, and I really have no reason to know the exact ages of everyone I interact with. I just let myself be friends with whoever feels like they would make for a good friend. And often times, there is a large age gap between myself and my friends. But that rarely feels like much of an issue.

And so when people in threads like these say that age gaps matter so much to them and that they don't befriend people far outside their age, like... it makes me wonder, how often do you check people's profiles on this site to see their age before you interact with them? I mean, like, sure, there are redstars and bluestars, but I don't think that really conveys a whole ton of information, at least on the redstar side of things. We know that bluestars are teenagers, but a redstar could be someone who just turned 18, or someone who's well into their 40s, or anywhere in-between. And when someone goes out of their way to avoid interacting with teen members and is only willing to befriend adults, it's like... you're treating a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old as being worlds apart, despite there probably being a much bigger gap in maturity and life experience between an 18-year-old and a 40-year-old.

It kind of makes me feel like people of different age groups could get along perhaps a lot better than they might expect, if we weren't so turned off by first impressions. In real life, a person's age is much more visibly obvious, so people can easily avoid developing friendships with people who are a very different age than them. And on Iwaku, anyone who wants to avoid interacting with teen members can easily do so, because we can easily identify teen members by their blue stars. But so long as you have that red star, and no one's going out of their way to check your age on your profile the first time they talk to you... well, I think it's surprisingly easy for an 18-year-old to get along just fine with a 40-year-old, despite the fact that, in real life, they might be too turned off by the obvious age gap to even get to know each other.
 
I feel like this is better answered by describing my general situation as opposed to just giving a general answer/reply.

For me if I had to describe my friends I'd have to divide them into mainly three groups.

1. IRL Friends from Early Years
These are the friends who I made in High School and earlier in life. As far as any of these friends are concerned I'd be the oldest, by a month. It's just sort of what happened, because of how children born in 1994 had a bit of a chaotic time in my area as to which year you could enter Kindergarten I was effectively 'held back' a year which immediately threw me into the older age bracket of classmates, and it just so happened those in said older age bracket I narrowly beat in regards to age. There were a few people older than me that I got along with and was friends (or at least acquaintances with) as a kid, but they slowly drifted apart just because they ultimately had different 'core' groups of friends, which made communication post-High School difficult, or there were friends I knew from Autism therapy programs, where those groups ended before I really got into cellphones or social media myself, so there really wasn't much a chance to keep contact.

Right now, I keep in touch with all (minus 1) of my friends from this group via a Discord group, where (including myself) 8 of us are either 22 or 23 years old, one is 20 years old and the other is 14. The 14 year old being the younger brother of one of the 23 year olds, and is incredibly mature for his age, so after him tagging along and/or gaming with us enough times growing up he effectively was part of the group.

2. IRL Friends from College
With how little I talk to them now, all of these guys are probably closer to Acquaintances than friends with how college semesters, work, distance, bigger social circles etc. put together makes it rather hard to stay close to people post-college. Regardless, while still going through college I was one of the students who came in straight out of High School (which looking back, may of been a mistake) so pretty much everyone there was older than me by default. Though with only one exception they were all still in their 20's, just in a later 20's than I was. There were a few there who were a year younger than me, but they didn't really enter the picture until year 2 of college.

3. Online Friends
Age's really don't pop up *too* often here. But I'm online often enough I end up learning most of my friends age's anyways just through small talk, or it getting mentioned in relation to something else. Regardless, this one is a pretty mixed bag, I got some who are younger than me, others who are older. But generally speaking, they don't go any younger than 17-18, or any older than mid-30's. Not out of any effort or desire on my own part, that's just what ended up happening.