Social Networks No Substitute for Reliable Real-Life Friends
February 18, 2012
From out “is this a surprise” department:
There are friends and then there are Friends. You’d have to be a bit naïve to be surprised that “Facebook Friends Can’t Be Relied on in a Crisis,” as The Telegraph affirms. Macmillan Cancer Support in the UK has released a poll which found that, though the average young adult has 237 Facebook “friends,” only a couple of them could be counted on for support in a time of crisis.
The problem is not just a dearth of virtual friends, though. Writer Stephen Adams reports,
The survey, of 1,000 people aged 18 to 35, found two-thirds of respondents said they had two or fewer really close friends. It also found that one in eight (13 per cent) admitted they did not have even a single person they considered to be a good enough friend to rely on, if life got very hard. Men (16 per cent) were more likely than women (12 per cent) to have no one to turn to.
Does this mean technology is robbing us of our real-world support networks? Perhaps, but a lot more study would need to be done before we draw that conclusion. Will these data throw some water on the notion of a search anchored in asking “friends”? I prefer an objective content processing system and key word search.
Cynthia Murrell, February 18, 2012
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