In a recent study of 70 undergraduate students at Assumption College in Massachusetts, researcher Maria Kalpidou found that the number of Facebook friends you have can predict social adjustment to college. Freshmen with 200 or more friends scored with lower levels of self-esteem and personal …
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Phew, I thought I was a loaner for a second there…
Or…It could be that most of those friends are HS friends who are no longer in the vicinity. Thus, they don’t have “real” friends at their college, but rather lots of friends all over the country. Jeeze, whoda thought people would MISS their old friends and that ALL freshmen might have issues with adjusting…
The real issue is that the freshmen on facebook spend too much time checking in on their old friends, thus the correlation. Or we could continue to find ways to demonize facebook.
I’m beginning to think all psychological and sociological studies are silly and do not use the scientific process.
This study is kindof a joke. Correlation does not equal causation, people.
LOL…Can people find better things to investigate?
I totally agree Miguel!
Nicole and Miguel,
I agree with you 100%. They should be doing better statistics such as why people do not participate in programs!
and if you think facebook is for pathetic facile ego centric morons and don’t have an account, what does that say?
What, we shouldn’t investigate human behavior online because the results might not sit well with some people? Interesting.
Honestly, I find this study amusing, and the bristling responses from what appear to be social-networkers even more so.
While I only have 32 real life (very close) friends staying up to date with me the rare times I update my own facebook… I understand the reason for the study. However, I do think it would be wise to extend it to far more than 70 students from a single college… that’s hardly a representative sample for the country, let alone the world of facebook users as a whole…
I’d dare say that outside of school life/post-grad, myspace friends would be similar (somehow accounting for the ppl who follow lots of bands to use myspace as a scheduling tool for concerts)… the people I know who have 600+ “friends…” basically just add people wherever they live or add everyone they’ve met a single time. That always creeped me out, to be honest. I just tell people I don’t have a page. Saves me a lot of grief!
Has the study been published yet? If so, do you know where? I’m interested in reading it. So far, all I can find on a quick search is that it was presented at the APA annual convention.
Do consider that facebook wasn’t open to the public initially. The upperclassmen are more than likely to be the initial beta testers of Facebook, and therefore have been using it longer.
Only a thought.
I was very interested to see that someone actually conducted a study on this. I recently authored a post on a blog I contribute to talking about the “facebook friend” phenomenon. One of my suspicions was also that people “collect” friends for the sake of feeling better about themselves / increasing their popularity.
I also would like to read the report in its entirety, as I feel the dates of study are imperative to full understanding. As was mentioned above – Facebook was first released privately to select universities, then to highschool, etc thus making the dates important.
This study is stupid, like you can tell from 70 students responses what the entire facebook world is like. The only thing that this proves is that for that particular year people with more facebook friends seemed less socially competent.
you all must have a lot of “friends” and be insecure. hahaha
Don’t worry about it. Don’t get offended.
He does have a good point though,
I mean look, we are the ones sitting on the computer reading about how people either have or do not have adequate social lives, based upon how many friends that they have on a social internet site as opposed to being out there with our friends. Seeing as we had time to not only find this page, but read it as well suggests a lot. Sorry. I don’t mean to upset you, but if you really do have friends then why the fuck do you car what some old man has to say?
I have to agree with Elray. You all seem really freaked by the implications….take a chill pill. It would be very interesting to do a mass study on what our social networking habits say about us.
I hang out on IRC. I’ve made some of my better friends through IRC. Real life? Bah.
It’s “fewer” than 200 friends, not “less”.
It’s “fewer” than 200 friends, not “less”.
I would need to know the method that this study was held to place full judgement but it would seem pretty weakly done to me for the following reasons:
-Upper year students were the “pioneers” of facebook having been the initial target market of facebook so they have been able to more efficiently use facebook as a social tool.
-70 student sample, it doesn’t seem large enough especially without a normative sample ( those who don’ use facebook for example)
-students are at two different points in their lives, 1st year students are adapting to a new environment, dealing with social and academic stressors. Compared to upper class students who are more relaxed and adjusted and who have built a more solid network of friends.
I personally think the psychology and views around facebook and its use could be an interesting field but there needs to be solid and informed research done before any conclusions can be made ( much like every other psychology study).
“A recent study” Where ? Link to the published study.
According to Maria’s page on the Assumption College website [0], she has never published such a study.
A study of 70 students would never pass a peer review because the number of “friends” each student has is likely to be larger than the entire study. A single badly adjusted student could throw the results off by a significant amount. Worse still, the participants would appear to be self-selecting. It is quite likely that many of the students would be in each other’s “friends” lists and therefore would have had an effect on each other’s “friending” habits.
This strikes me as being a preliminary study to determine if a real study is worthwhile. Dipping your toes in the water, so to speak. No conclusions about psychology can be drawn from such a study. We can draw conclusions about the merit of further study however.
I suspect the real study would be very interesting and I hope you can publish your thoughts on it if it ever makes it through the peer review process.
[0] http://www.assumption.edu/media-sources/forums/index.php?showtopic=66
It was presented as a poster at the annual APA convention in August 2008 and reported in the association’s monthly publication. You can read more details about the research (which is not peer-reviewed) here:
http://www.leprovoc.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticlePrinterFriendly&uStory_id=6a57efd9-1406-4d3a-8d72-87a909a70c44
Oddly enough, a lot of the friends that I make online become really good friends of mine in real life.
as a sophomore in college and facebook user i have to say that this is a really bad article. or perhaps i’m just a bad example. either way, i have to disagree. i don’t “talk” to people on facebook that i don’t already “know” in real life, thank you very much. also, 200 is an odd number for sure. anyone using facebook while a freshman in college should have over 200 hundred friends for three reasons. 1)mass friending of the new people you will come to meet at your school. i did it for my grade, and it really helps when you’re looking for a good party. 2)you will easily meet 200 people if you are a social person. likely that will be followed up with facebook requests. 3)you just got out of high school and should have friended most of your senior class.
people who use facebook as their main stream social network are creepy, let’s leave it at that. but to say that college freshman are sheep looking for a way to avoid looking at each other becuz it’s such a bad reminder of how much they hate themselves isn’t the way to go. maybe that’s not a quote from teh article, but i read it.. somehow i still got that message
oh and Dr. Grohol, psychologists who only study 70 people are less likely to know what they’re talking about but more likely to talk about it anyway. it’s a poor intellectual adjustment.
surprise? its called having more alone time / less friends time to kill.
I find this whole thing weird – why are we questioning the validity of a friendship, whether it is long-distance or local?
I had a misunderstanding with one of my former high-school friends and he refused to “type” anything back to me, so I called him. I said this is real life, I am sorry for saying what I had written, he was truthful about how he felt, and we both agreed that no hard feelings but we can’t deal with the facebook format friendship.
I never could have done that on Facebook. But, I am able to make the distinction between what works on Facebook and what doesn’t.
The study isn’t conclusive but the topic is interesting. Personally, the way Facebook misuses the term ‘friend’ doesn’t sit with me. To me, a friend is someone who’d take a bullet for you, and if I make 1,2 or 3 friends like this in my whole life I’d be more than happy. On Facebook most ‘friends’ are mere acquaintances in our lives. I know of many people who have 200-1000+ ‘friends’ and they seem to accept anyone who invites them. Myself, I’ve been on it 6 months and have declined many ‘friend’ invitations from people I’d hardly even regard as acquaintances. And I hate to say it, but my real-life contact with my facebook friends has declined since we hooked up on there. I’m disappointed in the whole Facebook thing, and feel it leads users to feel like they have ‘caught up’ with someone, when to me and many others, they haven’t. That’s my personal experience; it’d be intersting to see more studies on it.
Now that we are all here, I am sending friend requests to all….LOL
I typically don’t follow blogs or respond to blog/articles, so if there is a response to me on this one, chances are I probably won’t see it. I feel compelled, however, to respond here for reasons that will be obvious once read. In my lifetime,I have lived in seven different States as well as lived abroad for eight years. I am a 48 yr old psychologist who created a Facebook account after being sent “friend” invitations from six “real” friends over a years time. When I received the first five invites, I didn’t have a clue what Facebook was and had no time to investigate or participate in what I perceived to be just an online fad. However, when I received the sixth invitation from a very dear life-long friend and colleague who had moved to the other side of the country over ten years ago, I reconsidered. I thought perhaps that since we both had extremely busy lives and only telephoned or texted when we had a window of free time that meshed with our three hour time zone difference, this might allow us to check in and catch up on each others lives anytime. When I decided to check Facebook out, I thought I only needed to accept the invitation and that would be it. Upon discovering that I had to sign up for a Facebook account in order to accept her invitation, I opted to create a very generic one, at which time the other five invitations popped up to be accepted, which I did. Since that time, I have posted one profile picture and have been connected (through those initial six friends) with old high school and college friends, friends from churches I formerly attended while living in other states, friends of my children who became surrogate children to me when they were in Jr High and High School and are now married and living all across the Nation, as well as many cousins, nieces, and nephews that I don’t have time to call or contact on a regular basis. In life (outside of Facebook), I have eight siblings (one of whom has 13 grown children), a huge extended family, countless acquaintances, many, many friends, around three dozen close friends and three best friends. Obviously, I am a “people” person and relationships are important to me. I simply don’t have the time to stay in contact as often as I would like. Facebook has afforded me the ability to do just that. Now four months or so into Facebook, I have 69 Facebook friends. I can check in on them at my leisure, which is usually just before I go to bed, or when I am up at one or two o’clock in the morning on a weekend. I can see their family pictures and how the children are growing up, share vacation pictures and laughs, or just send them a “thinking of you” hug or humorous nudge. My husband who is also a doctor has a Facebook account as well. It has been an invaluable tool for both of us. Any viable research study that is conducted must be extended far beyond “students” only. My husband and I are without a doubt, NOT outliers. We personally know many professionals who use Facebook for business networking and social networking, as well as a means to stay in touch with family. Facebook is a major time management tool for us; allowing us to stay in touch with many people at the same time. I have 69 important people in my life who can look in on us at their convenience and see everything that I only had to post one time. Dr. Grohol, our colleagues’ research is an embarassment to me and, in my opinion, to our profession. The sample size alone just “sad”. What a waste of time and research funds. For whomever feels that Facebook is so “important” that it merits a research study, the variables/population and sample size need to be expanded exponentially and done over a longer term, as more and more people from various walks of life are discovering Facebook. Oh, and Peer Review would be a good thing.
It defies reason to think that anyone has hundreds of real friends. Anyone who has used Facebook at all knows that it is relatively easy to “add” friends, who will never post to your wall let alone talk with you or ever see you.
People are taking this way too seriously. One study doesn’t change the world, and just because its on the internet doesn’t mean its true.
“OMG it’s on the internet it must be true!”
It’s great to see the discussion surrounding this topic. The study isn’t published yet, it’s currently undergoing peer review, so hopefully those of you who are interested in reading it in it’s entirety should be able to read the full article soon.
This study is worthwhile to investiagte, I jus don’t agree with the implied interpretation. I really don’t think FB interferes with making friends at University, hence why things change with time. It could just be that those with more friends, and hence more FB friends are having a tougher time adjusting because they have left their extensive, possibly life long support networks behind. For those with few friends, going away to University may be exciting as they gives them a chance to meet new people, once who haven’t rejected or ignored them in High School. A clean slate. This may also explain why the pattern changes. After some period of adjustment, the “popular” ones bounce back as they make new friends and the “unpopular” ones slide back into their initial position.
mmm, i think our responses in this blog are the actual data for research . my thoughts about facebook is quite pathethic, i kind of got addictive to it since i got on it two years ago. i mean i tried not to open the website , otherwise i will stayed for two hours looking at others pictures, reading what other people write to others , etc , very creepy, but in real life i dont look creepy at all ( i look cute and sexy ) , but i have never had many friends, maximun 3 good friends, and i dont really feel i am similar to them , so thought that maybe in facebook i can become good friends with the people i think i belong too.,, but is not that simple…,
now i am actually considering closing my account , is giving me unnecessary anxiety.
obviuolsy i must have some problems of low self-esteem and insecurity combined with times in which i feel very egocentric and better than others…
i cant close my account in facebook cause i will miss feeling in touch with others , at least in that virtual narcisist way …, but doesnt need to be like that, is how we manage it i suppose,,like any other activity in this life.
eventough i would like to be the ‘popular’ and have many friends, i dont really add anyone that adds me , i do declined many “friends add”. for me is not how many friends i got in my facebook , but how many to you keep active with , that is how many write in your wall, with how many do you have pictures with , etc. some of the coolest most popular people dont have more than 100 friends in their page, plus we see not activity on their profile, that means they are too busy and dont need facebook to have friends, etc ,..they must have enough in their life to bother with that crap…
I just finished reading the many responses to this post and have to agree with JK’s post from March’09. I am following this blog site as part of an online Nursing class in Emerging Trends in Biotechnology. I am a psychiatric nurse and have been for 30 years. I have a very active facebook page/account, have created several groups, invited many of my real friends,colleagues, acquaintances and family members to join as well. The majority of my coworkers in the ED have facebook pages as do my extended family members. In the year since I have activated my account I have reconnected with former high school and college friends, distant family members and have had the opportunity to touch base with many of them and keep current on their lives in a way that I have not ever had the time to do before with the busy social, school, family and work schedule I keep. Yes, I have well over 300 Facebook “friends”, many of who are real friends as well. My collegues are physicians, therapists and nurses who not only share events from our personal lives but interesting articles, websites etc. we come across on the net. I do have issues with the proliferation of all the virtual world games of late though, Farmville, Youville, Mafia World etc. often bog down my feeds and I wish there was a way to turn them off without turning off all other posts from those friends. I have read that the fastest growing demographic of facebook users in the middle-aged, so I am sure I am not alone in my sentiment here. College kids have grown up with the internet, they have had cell phones with texting and browsing capabilities most of their lives and easily post and read posts of their friends while on the go, not just sitting alone in their dorm rooms with their virtual friends. I have yet to read this actual study, Dr. Grohol said it was related to a poster presentation at the APA in 2008…has it actually been published or expanded to date?
Like anything, maybe it’s true and maybe it isn’t. So why are some folks not just disagreeing, they’re obviously being very defensive about it?
BTW, seems like there’s been alot of talk lately about the growing connection between Facebook “friend accumulators” and Narcissism…. and of course “N’s” are always notoriously sensitive to criticism!
This is interesting. Does this study account for extroverted and introverted types?
I am an introvert, so I would not dream of having even 30 Facebook friends, because I could not stand the constant requests to check out so many people’s profiles and what not. I am simply not interested in keeping up with people unless I have a deep relationship with them. I don’t try to contact people just for the sake of contacting them. I have to have something to talk about, and the conversation must be productive in some way. Not to say that I don’t care about the people I meet, because I am a very friendly and loving person.
But I can understand that some people are different. Some people, most likely extroverted people, require keeping in contact with many others. They need the mental dn emotional stimulation that socializing brings. So those 200 or so aquaintances probably suffice for them. Some people don’t need deep relationships, just many relationships so they always have someone to contact. And no, not all extroverts have “shallow” relationships. Just because they have many friends does not mean they don’t care about any of them.
All in all, it really can matter if a person is introverted or extroverted. As an introvert, my real relationships would grow weak if I depended on Facebook to keep up with them. Eventually the people I try to keep up with on Facebook become too demanding and would want me to stay very tight with them, which I simply can’t do. If I don’t talk to my friends on Facebook, they don’t expect too much from our relationship.
Nothing wrong with that.
But some people can utilize Facebook productively. If they need many contacts and can handle the high demands of constant socialization, Facebook can become a wonderful networking tool. They might gain energy from being asked to comment on 200 profiles and from telling the world what they are doing and how they are feeling at the moment. Their friendships outside of Facebook may not be very deep, but who are we to say that deep relationships work for everybody? If they can lead healthy and happy lives by having many relationships in Facebook, is that wrong?
Facebook is just for networking. It is fun to throw out questions to see how people respond to them. I like to ask questions in my status and see all the answers I get.