社交網絡時代“好友”雖多密友很少

In this age of Facebook and Twitter, we are all supposed to have hundreds of friends.

But in fact most of us have just two people we would consider to be close friends – down from an average of three 25 years ago, a study claims.

Researchers say this is no cause for concern. Instead, they claim that while some of us may be getting ‘more vulnerable’, many are simply becoming more adept at deciding who they can trust to be a close confidant.

The figure contrasts sharply with the race among the young to collect as many ‘friends’ as possible on social networking sites to prove their popularity.

According to Facebook the average user has 130 friends, but many of these are chance acquaintances or people they will never meet in real life.

But according to Matthew Brashears from the University of Cornwell, although this shrinking social network 'makes us potentially more vulnerable, we’re not as socially isolated as scholars had feared'.

For his study, Mr Brashears used data from a nationally representative experiment.

More than 2,000 adults ages 18 and older were surveyed from the nationally representative Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS) programme.

Mr Brashears found that 'modern discussion networks have decreased in size, which is consistent with other researchers' findings, but that social isolation has not become more prevalent'.

When asked to list the names of people they had discussed 'important matters' with over the previous six months, about 48 percent of participants listed one name, 18 percent listed two, and roughly 29 percent listed more than two names for these close friends.

On average, participants had 2.03 confidantes. And just over four percent of participants didn't list any names.

Female participants and those who were educated were the least likely to report no names on their confidante list.在這個Facebook和Twitter盛行的時代，按理說我們每人都應該有數百位朋友。

然而有研究稱，事實上我們中的大多數人只有兩個親密的朋友，而25年前人均好友數量爲3個。

研究人員認爲並不需要爲此擔心。他們指出，儘管我們當中有一部分人可能會變得“更脆弱”，但很多人只是更善於判定自己能夠信任的知己密友罷了。

這一數據和年輕人爲了證明自己的人氣爭相在社交網站上加儘可能多的“好友”形成了強烈對比。

Facebook的數據顯示，平均每位用戶有130名“好友”，但這些“好友”中的許多人都是偶然認識的人，或根本不會在現實生活中遇見的人。

康威爾大學的馬修•布萊希爾斯說，儘管縮小的好友圈子“可能會讓我們更脆弱，但我們並不像學者們所擔心的那樣孤立”。

在他的研究中，布萊希爾斯採用了一項有全國代表性的實驗的數據。

這一具有全國代表性的“社會科學項目分時實驗”調查了2000多名年齡在18歲及以上的成人。

布萊希爾斯發現，“現代人進行實質討論的圈子縮小了，這和其他研究人員的發現是一致的，但是並沒有更多人因此變得孤立。”

當研究人員讓參與者列出在過去六個月內和他們一起討論“重要事情”的人時，約有48%的參與者列出一個名字，18%的人列出兩個名字，約有29%的人在密友這一項列出兩個以上的名字。

平均來看，參與者擁有2.03個知心好友。只有稍過4%的參與者沒有列出任何名字。

女性參與者和那些受過教育的參與者在密友這一項沒有列出任何名字的可能性最低。