Laura Carstensen

Instead, it appears that what happens is that over time, social networks get smaller, but they're very well honed.

And so the people who are retained in the networks are those that are most important, the people who are most predictable, most valuable individuals.

in our lives.

And those are the relationships that stay.

And we let these other more distant acquaintance-like relationships fade away.

But what it means then is that our social networks, as we get older, are more emotionally dense.

They're people who we really care about.

And so there's a real benefit to that kind of a social network.

Exactly.

I try to explain this to undergraduates who are having a hard time grasping that.

Like I say, imagine that you only had one week left in a city that you'd been exploring.

Do you want to try another new restaurant or do you want to go to your favorite restaurant in that last time out?

And I think that's some of what's happening with age.

exploration is extremely adaptive when time horizons are long.

We need to learn.

We need to explore.

We need to collect.

Because those kinds of things could be useful.

And especially if your time horizon is so vast, right?

Anything could happen.