When Do Kids Start Making Friends? And How Can High-Quality Shows Support?

There's a Bluey episode called "Library" where Bluey and Bingo set up an elaborate pretend library — and Muffin keeps wrecking it. She won't follow the rules, she disrupts the game, and the other kids get genuinely frustrated.

It's funny. But it's also a perfect picture of how friendship actually develops.

Muffin isn't being difficult for difficulty’s sake. She's just younger — and the cognitive skills required to follow pretend social rules, read the room, and coordinate her desires with someone else's are still being built. What looks like chaos is actually a developmental gap in action.

Here's what most parents don't know: the building blocks of friendship start forming in infancy, long before kids can play together, share toys, or say the word "friend." And the media children watch is one of the places those skills get modeled — for better or worse, depending on what's on.

This is what child development research actually says about how friendship builds from birth to age 6, and what it means for what you put on the screen.

How Early Does Friendship Start? (Earlier Than You Think)

Friendship develops gradually from early social interest in infancy. Beginning around 3-6 months, infants begin engaging in shared attention, coordinating their gaze between a caregiver and an object. (Mundy & Sigman, 2006). When you say "look, the bunny!" and your baby follows your gaze and looks back at you, you're practicing the same cognitive loop that underlies all future social connections. Shared attention is everything at this stage.

In other words, friendship starts with, “Did you see that too?”

Why Toddlers Don't Share (And Why That's Developmentally Normal)

Between ages 1-2, toddlers move from watching other kids to playing near them. This is called parallel play, meaning when children play side-by-side, often with similar toys, without directly playing with each other. It looks like they're ignoring one another, but parallel play is actually a meaningful developmental step: toddlers are building awareness of peers and learning what social interaction looks like before they're ready to coordinate with someone else.

Between 18 and 30 months, something else important is under construction: the ability to coordinate your own desires with someone else’s. In a lab study, Brownell and colleagues (2013) invited toddlers to sit at a table with an adult. Each child was given snacks. The adult then expressed liking the snack and said they wanted some too. Importantly, the toddler would not lose their own portion by sharing — there was no cost. Researchers compared two groups: 18-month-olds and 25-month-olds

What the research found: 25-month-olds were significantly more likely to share food with an adult who expressed wanting some. 18-month-olds typically did not — not because they were selfish, but because the brain systems for prosocial behavior were still maturing.

So when your 20-month-old grabs a truck and says “MINE,” it’s not like they’re intentionally not following your sharing rule. It’s just that they haven’t built the skill yet.The brain systems required to pause, consider another’s desire, and act prosocially are still maturing.

This is also why seeing prosocial behavior modeled matters at this age, even before kids can do it themselves. When a TV show or movie depicts the full sequence (character wants something → asks → the other character decides to give → both feel good), it's modeling the skill for your child’s developing brain. A key differentiator of high quality content is showing this "full sequence." A show that skips the conflict and goes straight to resolution isn't modeling sharing skills. It's just showing it.

When Do Kids Form Real Friendships? What Happens at Ages 3-4?

Around ages 3-4, children begin forming reciprocal friendships, a.k.a. relationships marked by mutual preference and sustained interaction (Howes, 1983).

In longitudinal studies, researchers observed preschoolers’ cooperative play over time and later measured prosocial skills and aggression levels (Howes & Phillipsen, 1998). Children who engaged in more complex cooperative play early on later showed stronger prosocial behavior and fewer aggressive patterns.

At the same time, children between 3-5 years develop what researchers call theory of mind, the ability to understand that other people have their own thoughts, feelings, and perspectives and that they can be different from your own (Wellman, 2014). A child who has developed a theory of mind can recognize that their friend might feel sad about something that doesn't bother them, or that someone can believe something that isn't true, supporting empathy and smoother peer interactions.

Activities to support the foundations of friendship for ages 0-6

• 0-12 months: Your role: Face-to-face interaction. Imitation games. Shared joy. If watching together, narrate what you see. This shared attention is the point.
• 1-2 years: Your role: Narrate play. Model turn-taking. Don't overemphasize sharing yet. Look for shows that depict turn-taking clearly and with consequence, not just as a given.
• 3-4 years: Your role: Lightly encourage sharing and kindness. Coach through conflict calmly. Shows that walk through conflict resolution step-by-step give kids a script to borrow from are gold.
• 5-6 years: Your role: Ask reflective questions: "What would feel fair?" Do the same during or after shows: "What could she have done differently?" is just as useful on the couch as on the playground.

Understanding what friendships look like in early childhood

One of the most common things parents worry about is watching their child on the edge of the group, or coming home without anyone to name as a friend. The research offers some reassurance here.

First, exclusion is often not intentional. What looks like exclusion is frequently confusion or a lack of social skill, not deliberate rejection. Children are still learning the mechanics of joining play, reading social cues, and negotiating shared activity.

Second, making friends is a taught skill, not an innate one. Research on early peer relationships shows that children develop friendship skills gradually, through adult modeling and direct coaching (Hollingsworth & Buysse, 2009). Preschoolers really benefit from practicing simple phrases like, "Can I play?" or "Do you want to build together?" — before social situations happen instead of trying to figure it out in the moment (Howes, 1983).

Third, theory of mind (the ability to understand what someone else is thinking and feeling) develops significantly between ages 3-5 (Wellman, 2014). Children who are still building this capacity may miss social cues that seem obvious to adults.

What helps: Adult coaching through conflict, narrating peer interactions ("It looks like she wants a turn"), and practicing friendship language at home before it's needed out in the world. Shows that use this exact language — where characters ask to join, get left out, and try again — give kids a script to work from before they need it. Having the words ready changes what a child can actually do in the moment.

How Quality Shows Can Actually Support Your Child

At the same time children are learning how to make friends, they are also watching and absorbing how relationships work. Friendship skills — like joining play, sharing, or resolving conflict — are not just learned through experience. They can also be modeled.

From a developmental perspective, this means:

• Toddlers benefit from seeing simple turn-taking in action
• Preschoolers benefit from clear examples of inclusion, fairness, and problem-solving
• Older children benefit from seeing perspective-taking and cooperation

Studies have found associations between media use and young children's prosocial development. Shows that exhibit the cause and effect (“he shared, then she felt happy”), clear social cues, and realistic peer interactions can help reinforce the exact skills children are actively developing.

This is why not all “good” content is equally useful. What matters is whether children can see, understand, and apply the social behavior being modeled.

Watch Together: Friendship in Action

High quality media, especially when watched together with your child, can be supportive of friendship-building skills

In this episode, Bluey and Bingo set up an elaborate pretend library — and Muffin keeps wrecking it. Muffin isn't being difficult for difficulty’s sake, she's just younger. The cognitive skills required to follow shared pretend rules and coordinate her desires with someone else's are still being built.

While watching, try asking:

• "Why do you think Muffin kept breaking the rules?"
• "How do you think Bluey felt when the game got ruined?"
• "What could they have done so Muffin could play too?"

Common Misconceptions About Kids and Friendship

Myth: Toddlers should know how to share.

Sharing requires a child to pause their own desire, recognize someone else's need, and act on it — a set of cognitive and emotional skills that are still developing through age 3 and beyond. In a lab study, researchers found that 18-month-olds typically did not share food with an adult who expressed wanting some, while 25-month-olds were significantly more likely to (Brownell et al., 2013). Not because younger toddlers are selfish, but because the brain systems for prosocial behavior are still maturing.

Myth: Kids naturally know how to make friends.

Friendship skills are learned over time, through adult modeling and coaching. Research shows that toddlers often need adult prompting to share or help, and that these behaviors become more intentional as children approach preschool age (Warneken & Tomasello, 2009; Zheng, Izuzmi-Taylor, & Turner, 2020). Practicing phrases, coaching through conflict, and narrating peer dynamics are all part of how children develop these skills.

Remember that not all content that features friendship actually teaches it. A show where characters are already friends and have fun together is not the same as a show where a character doesn't know how to join a game, tries, fails, and tries differently. The first is entertainment. The second is modeling. The difference matters.

Myth: Noticing that kids look or act differently is rude.

Children begin noticing similarities and differences early, and these observations shape social preferences and early group concepts (Rhodes, 2012). Noticing differences is developmentally normal — and research suggests that a strong sense of belonging, built partly through understanding both similarities and differences, predicts better peer outcomes and less exclusion over time (Osterman, 2000).

Myth: When a child excludes someone, it's meanness.

Exclusion at young ages is often confusion or a lack of skill rather than intentional unkindness. Children at preschool age are just beginning to understand fairness and inclusion in a nuanced way (Killen & Rutland, 2011). Adult guidance — prompting children to notice when someone is alone and giving them language to respond — is how this skill develops.

The Bottom Line

Friendship develops step by step: from shared attention, to parallel play, to cooperation, to genuine empathy. Each stage builds on the last, and children are learning at every one of them.

They're learning from you. From their peers. And from what they watch.

The question isn't whether screens are part of that picture. For most families, they already are. The question is whether what's on the screen is actually doing something useful for your child’s development, or just filling time.

References

Brownell, C. A., Svetlova, M., & Nichols, S. R. (2013). To share or not to share: When do toddlers respond to another’s needs? Infancy, 18(1), 96–109.

Hollingsworth, H. L., & Buysse, V. (2009). Establishing friendships in early childhood inclusive settings: What roles do parents and teachers play?. Journal of Early intervention, 31(4), 287-307.

Howes, C. (1983). Patterns of friendship. Child Development, 54(4), 1041–1053.Howes, C., & Phillipsen, L. (1998). Continuity in children's relations with peers. Social Development, 7(3), 340–349.

Killen, M., & Rutland, A. (2011). Children and social exclusion: Morality, prejudice, and group identity. Wiley-Blackwell.

Mundy, P., & Sigman, M. (2006). Joint attention, social competence, and developmental psychopathology. In D. Cicchetti & D. J. Cohen (Eds.), Developmental Psychopathology: Vol. 1. Theory and method (2nd ed., pp. 293–332). Wiley.

Osterman, K. F. (2000). Students' need for belonging in the school community. Review of Educational Research, 70(3), 323–367.

Rhodes, M. (2012). Naive theories of social groups drive young children’s reasoning about people. Cognition, 124(3), 356–371.

Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2009). Varieties of altruism in children and chimpanzees. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(9), 397–402.

Wellman, H. M. (2014). Making minds: How theory of mind develops. Oxford University Press.

Zheng,X., Izuzmi-Taylor, S. & Turner, S.B. (2020). Toddlers’ Development of Friendship. International Association of Laboratory Schools Journal, 11(1), 55-60.