My youngest son often complains about not having enough friends. He belongs to Generation Z (born in 1997), for which it seems to be a common problem. I understand the seriousness of this, and I try to help him by telling him that the quantity of friends is not paramount, but the quality is. Secondly, I share my personal experience: I only have maybe 4 or 5 friends, all of them for at least 30 years: friends undergo a hard selection in life. And finally, I sent him an interesting article from the Washington Post: Making new friends can be hard

It’s a difficult issue, I see, and it’s very difficult for me to help, but this problem has been around for ages, and it needs life experience, patience, and also a lot of energy and strength, especially when we know, from a longer experience, that real friends cannot be many.