Whether it's due to popular teen films such as Mean Girls or gender stereotypes most people imagine girls form more cliques than boys.
Yet a new study contradicts this, suggesting that boys are more likely to form tight-knit friendship groups.
Researchers say analysing social mixing patterns is important for infectious diseases and vaccination planning. They found that boys were more likely to mix with the same six friends over a period of six months. Girls' friendships, however, were more variable.
The study, published on Wednesday in scientific journal Plos One, was led by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in partnership with the University of Cambridge.
Another of the study's authors, Dr Clare Wenham, aid: "Kids are a very important part of looking at how diseases spread. Previous studies have only looked at how children mix over one day, so with this study we wanted to see how it changed over time. It would also be good to extend the study over a longer period to see how friendship groups changed over the years."
