Facebook & Social Nets No Substitute for Friendships

It comes as one of those study topics that makes you wonder; were they seriously out to prove this, or were they just bored.

Sheffield Hallam University in northern England was recently home to a study conducted by Doctor Will Reader, which found that social networking sites – like Facebook and MySpace – are not all that likely to help people build ‘close’ friendships.

Speaking to the British Association Festival of Science in York, Reader said "Although the number of friends people have on these sites can be massive, the number of close friends is approximately the same as in the face-to-face real world contact."

Apparently his study found that face-to-face contact in human friendships was “absolutely imperative”, and that it was apparently very easy to be deceptive over the internet.

However – and there is often a however these days – the blanket statement that such communities are not helpful for growing friendships will naturally attempt to include those who have made friendships over the internet.

There is a note in the press release though that suggests that what Reader is trying to pin down though, is not ‘close’ friends, but rather ‘best’ friends. He references an early study conducted in the 1990’s at the Liverpool University in northwest England that stated that people have approximately 150 friends, but only 5 close friends.

This would suggest that by close, he indeed means best. But best is not always only ‘close’, and one could have many close friends without including them in to a ‘best friend’ category.

For example, while Facebook and MySpace are not prime examples of this, communities such as online forums and World of Warcraft are breeding places for close friendships within that community. Issues can be discussed that you might not with just a regular friend, and help can be provided. The genre specific people you are interacting with allows for a melding of personalities, not necessarily common in everyday life.

So while Reader’s research may be obviously correct when relating to online communities such as Facebook which allow for friends numbering in the thousands, the same cannot be said for everything online.

Posted by Josh Hill.

Story Link:

http://www.physorg.com/news108714824.html