When I was young and foolish I used to think that potential friends were people you liked. You had shared interests. 【小题1】 You were interested in what the other had said, or you pretended to be, at least sometimes.

【小题2】 I realize that friends are people who turn up on time. If you want to be my friend, all it would take is for you to arrive where we agreed and when we agreed. No last-minute texts. No frantic (疯狂的) phone calls complaining that you’re stuck on the bus and the traffic is terrible.【小题3】 So it cannot be your everlasting excuse. You can take it into consideration, and set off ten minutes early in case of a total disaster.【小题4】

So I have every sympathy with the minister of the Holy Cross Church in Bearsted, Kent, who has started fining brides £ 100 if they turn up late. He says he’s going to add it to the wedding fee and return it afterwards with the marriage certificate if the couple manage to be punctual.【小题5】 So cheer for all the brides and grooms who make it to the church on time. I’d happily count any of them as friends.

How many times do you check your Facebook page in a day to see whether your latest post has got another “like” or “thumbs(拇指) up”?

Although you might be embarrassed to admit how many times you do this, don’t worry—psychological findings have shown it’s completely normal. In fact, the pleasure we derive from receiving a “like” is equal to that of eating chocolate or winning money, and we can’t help wanting more. According to the findings, which observed 32 teens aged between 13 and 18, the feedback circuit (反馈回路) in the teens’ brains is particularly sensitive, and the “social” and “visual” parts of their brains were active when they received “likes” on the social network. The research also showed that though the thumbs up might come from complete strangers, the good they derive from them worked all the same.

So, does it mean we should try our best to win as many thumbs up as possible? Not necessarily so if we know the reasons behind our desire for attention. In “why do people long for attention” by M. Farouk Radwan, he explained several cases in which people naturally longed for attention. Radwan said people who were an only child, who were used to being the center of attention in their house, may try to copy these conditions. Feeling “overlooked and unappreciated” might also lead you to long for attention. Other times, the state of being jealous, or wanting to cover your mistakes may also contribute to such longings.

In fact, too much desire for attention can create anxiety, and in turn ruin your happiness even when you get it. So what can we do about it? The answer is quite simple. “If people could adopt goals not focused on their own self-esteem（自尊）but on something larger than their self, such as what they can create or contribute to others, they would be less sensitive to some of the negative effects of pursuing self-esteem,” wrote psychology professor Jennifer Crocker.

So perhaps the answer to our addiction to “likes” is simply to focus on something larger than ourselves—a hard, but a worthy one.