It's healthy to have older friends. You go 'Look I'm younger than them!' That's always the nice thing if you can be the youngest one in the room at times. Like if you're always the oldest one in the room you'll start to feel like the oldest person in the world. So get older friends because they're cool. Get cool older friends.
The American way was for commerce personal relationships and religion to be voluntary. No one was forced to participate in something he didn't want.