Teens from more affluent households are more likely to spend time with their closest friend at someone’s house or engaged in hobbies, sports and clubs outside of school than teens from lower-income families. Wealthier and white teens are more likely to spend time with a close friend at someone’s house About one-in-five teens (21%) say they spend time with each other at a place of worship, 6% said they spend time with their friend at a job and 5% of teens cited another location. Roughly one-quarter (23%) of teens say they spend time with their closest friend at places like a coffee shop, mall or store. 4 Additionally, 45% say they spend time with their closest friend doing extracurricular activities like sports, clubs or hobbies and a similar 42% say they spend time with their closest friend in a neighborhood setting. More than half (55%) of teens say they spend time with their closest friend online, doing things like interacting on social media or playing video games. Other than school, the next most common place to spend time with a best friend is at someone’s house – 58% of teens say they spend time with their closest friend on a regular basis at someone’s house. The percentage of teens who spend time with their closest friend at school is largely consistent across a wide range of demographic groups. More than four-in-five teens, (83%), say they spend time with that friend at school on a regular basis. Overall, school is by far the top location where teens say they spend time with their closest friends. In order to gain a broad understanding of the places – including online places – teens spend time with their closest friends, the survey presented nine different venues, activities or locations and asked teens to indicate whether they regularly spend time with their closest friend at each of these venues or activities. Most Common Places Teens Spend Time With Close Friends Are School, Friends’ Houses and Online Throughout this chapter, the term “teen” refers to teens with a close friend, unless otherwise noted. Therefore, the analysis that follows is based on the 95% of teens who explicitly indicated that they do have someone they consider to be their closest friend. In the context of the survey and the analysis that follows, a teen’s “closest friend” is defined as “someone you can talk to about things that are really important to you, but who is not a girlfriend or boyfriend.” Some 4% of teens in this survey indicated that they do not have anyone in their life who fits this criteria, and an additional 1% were not willing to indicate whether they have a closest friend or not. By stressing these particular relationships, we can focus our participants’ responses on one particular and meaningful tie. In contrast to the analysis in Chapter 1, this portion of the survey involved questions that asked teens to focus on all of the ways in which they spend time and interact with the friend who is closest to them. The intimacy and closeness of these important friend relationships is special 3 and examining it here shines a brighter light on teens’ digital friendship practices. In this chapter, we focus on the ways in which teens interact and spend time - both digitally and in person - with the person they consider to be their “closest friend.” The preceding chapter of this report examined the role of digital technologies in the broad scope of teens’ friendships. There are casual acquaintances, associates, classmates, school friends, friends from camp or church or dance or soccer, all with varying and shifting degrees of closeness. Teens have many different kinds of friends.