Ever wonder why your cousin has
1,256 friends and you only have 139? Ever wonder if she even knows all those
people? More then likely she knows less than 1/3 of her Facebook “friends”. It
surprises me how vast Facebook as grown in such a short amount of time. I
remember when Facebook was starting to replace MySpace and Sconex, other social
Internet networks. To create your
Facebook profile you had to be affiliated with a college, limiting us high
schools to join until we got our college email address. That was the highlight
of my college acceptance; I could finally make a Facebook page. This privilege
of having a Facebook is no more, there are high school freshman using this form
of social networking. It has also not longer become a forum to stay in touch
with your college friends; when did it all change? When did we become so
concerned with the number of friends we have and the audience we are trying to
entertain?
In a study done at Los Angeles in
2006, the average network size for college students was approximately 137; it
has not only increased but also has almost tripled in size by 2009. With this
rapid increase of Facebook “friends” comes a societal misunderstanding on
relationships.
In a recent study in 2012 done by
Manago, Taylor, and Greenfield, they dig deeper into the question, are all
those people really your “friends”? The study examines the relationship between
network size and perceived social support to see whether the growth of social
networks has led to dissociation between Facebook use and a sense of social
support from close relationships or people that are classified as “friends”. They also looked at the “anatomy”
of the friendship network to consider whether other kinds of online
relationships are associated with a sense of social support. Manago et al. question
whether intimate self-disclosure is becoming more public; through status
updates broadcasted to one’s entire network of contracts and is that
self-disclosure in association with perceived social support among college
students. To do so, Manago et al. took eighty- eight undergrad students from
the University of California, Los Angeles who were asked through a voluntary
Monkey Survey about their general Facebook routine while they were logged into
the network. Some questions students were asked included: how many hours they
used Facebook per day, how often they log on, how many people they believe view
their status updates, what they use their status update for, the number of
friends in their network and how they classify them (e.g. acquaintance, family
member, etc.).
Their data support the ideas that
college students aren’t just using Facebook to stay in touch with their best
friend from home or those high school friends that decided to go to college 900
miles away. Instead they’re looking for an audience to like their new photo and
comment on his or her carefully thought out status; they want the attention. This
lack of intimacy is imposing on psychosocial interactions and developing
relatively superficial relationships (acquaintances and activity-based friends)
that are making up the majority of participants’ Facebook networks. Next time
you log into your Facebook, think about it: do you actually know all your
friends? Are you updating your status to fulfill some kind of gratification or
closure? Think about it, why do you use your Facebook?
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Melissa Goncalves
Manago, A. M., Taylor, T., & Greenfield, P. M. (2012). Me and my 400
friends: The anatomy of college students' Facebook networks, their
communication patterns, and well-being. Developmental Psychology, 48(2), 369-380. doi:10.1037/a0026338