I feel like it has more to do with having a surplus of time and resources.
When you're in school, you have more time to hang out with people and every interaction isn't tainted by the reality of having to compete over limited resources.
As an adult, you are responsible for acquiring your own resources so every relationship is tainted by economic competition. I suspect that rich people have more friends for this reason; they have more surplus so they're not constantly (subconsciously) thinking about how to exact resources from everyone around them; it's probably also why rich people feel uncomfortable being friends with non-rich people.
Nobody wants to be seen as a resource. Yet when you are truly deprived of resources, you can't help but see everything and everyone as a resource first and foremost. You need to have your basic needs met and your anxiety levels within tolerable range to see beyond that.
The reality is that, during a bad famine, people will start subconsciously seeing their friends as a potential meal. It's not an ideal foundation for a friendship. In this case (for most of us), the problem is not famine, but there is a strong desire to escape the constant anxiety of having to work insanely hard just to make ends meet which has a similar effect on friendships.
In communist countries, I suspect that regular people form strong friendships because there are no good mechanisms to extract resources from each other and they have their basic needs taken care of anyway (aside from the occasional famine). Citizens are treated like children. In North Korea, many adult women hold hands. That's unthinkable in a capitalist society. That level of friendship is simply unattainable to the kinds of resource-oriented people who tend to succeed at capitalism. But at least if you do have a lot of surplus resources, being resource-oriented isn't as much of a problem.
It's hard to be both resource-oriented and poor, then you can't have any friends. Sadly, capitalism forces us to become resource-oriented, even if it is against our nature.
As an adult, you are responsible for acquiring your own resources so every relationship is tainted by economic competition. I suspect that rich people have more friends for this reason; they have more surplus so they're not constantly (subconsciously) thinking about how to exact resources from everyone around them; it's probably also why rich people feel uncomfortable being friends with non-rich people.
Nobody wants to be seen as a resource. Yet when you are truly deprived of resources, you can't help but see everything and everyone as a resource first and foremost. You need to have your basic needs met and your anxiety levels within tolerable range to see beyond that.
The reality is that, during a bad famine, people will start subconsciously seeing their friends as a potential meal. It's not an ideal foundation for a friendship. In this case (for most of us), the problem is not famine, but there is a strong desire to escape the constant anxiety of having to work insanely hard just to make ends meet which has a similar effect on friendships.
In communist countries, I suspect that regular people form strong friendships because there are no good mechanisms to extract resources from each other and they have their basic needs taken care of anyway (aside from the occasional famine). Citizens are treated like children. In North Korea, many adult women hold hands. That's unthinkable in a capitalist society. That level of friendship is simply unattainable to the kinds of resource-oriented people who tend to succeed at capitalism. But at least if you do have a lot of surplus resources, being resource-oriented isn't as much of a problem.
It's hard to be both resource-oriented and poor, then you can't have any friends. Sadly, capitalism forces us to become resource-oriented, even if it is against our nature.