Particularly I prefer having friends who are my age because we might find common things that most young people like to talk about. In contrast to young friends, old people are sort of hard to make them talk about things we like . Most fo them prefer talking about their past life, politics and some other boring topics.

I don't think its a problem i have tons of friends older and younger than me.

personally i don't care of the age of the people i choose to be friends with. some are 15 years older some are even 20 years younger than me. you can get 50 years old and be a young at heart - and reading some the postings in other threads i doubt some have grown beyond their childhood years..

but i can understand young girls or women who don't want to be friends to older people namely guys. nowadays it's hard to distinguish a normal and sencere adult from a creep who's hitting on kids. if e.g. a guy my age is answering a request from a girl for help in a matter of homeworks in the language department it easliy could be a taken the wrong way. but if that happens, and it did happen to me, i'm not offended at all because it shows that the girls and young women are aware. i'm sad because i could'nt be of help. but on the other hand i'm glad that the young people here are confident enough to make clear they just want to have contact to people thier own age. and i respect that.

so what i'm trying to say is to some people age matters to some not. it's a thing of personal preference. as long as everyone is respecting that there should be no problem.

For sure! A friend is a friend. I actually prefer having friends older than me but younger wouldn't be too bad if I tried being friends with the younger crowd to. If you can call somebody a friend it doesn't matter what age they are. Just as long as every thing is legal and you enjoy each others company.

The Chinese have an expression, 忘年交 wàng nián jiāo - friendship between generations; good friends despite great difference in age. If it's OK with Confucius, it's OK with me.