How Many Facebook Friends Are Real-Life Friends?
Written by wdkxwp on January 26, 2016
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Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary psychology at Oxford University, conducted research into how Facebook friendship correlates with real-life friendship. Of the 150 Facebook friends the average user has, Dunbar found that only 15 could be counted as actual friends and only five as close friends.
Rather than increasing people’s social circles, Dunbar suggests Facebook and other social media may function to prevent friendships “decaying” over time.
“Friendships, in particular, have a natural decay rate in the absence of contact, and social media may well function to slow down the rate of decay,” Dunbar wrote. “However, that alone may not be sufficient to prevent friendships eventually dying naturally if they are not occasionally reinforced by face-to-face interaction.”
Source: Newsweek.com
