Bob CollinsOnly about four of your Facebook friends actually care about you, a study from the UK says today.
The researchers say the social networks aren’t really increasing the size of quality friendships no matter how many friends on Facebook nor followers on Twitter might suggest. And online friendships aren’t increasing the size of users’ offline relationships, according to Dr. Robin Dunbar of Oxford, the CBC reports today.
What Dunbar found was consistent with previous studies into the size of typical individuals’ relationship networks – five very close individuals, 15 close individuals, and additional layers of friends and acquaintances of up to 1,500 individuals.
Those surveyed by Dunbar were found to have a mean of 4.1 people in their “social clique” and 13.6 close friends.
Interestingly, however, subjects with more Facebook friends (young people and women were found to have larger online networks) did not report having more friends in general.
Dunbar had previously released research showing that people can only manage about 150 relationships online and offline.
The study also confirmed that teenagers are moving away from Facebook because it’s too open to the world.
