Warning: you can’t make real friends online

Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace do not help you make more genuine close friends, according to a survey by researchers who studied how the websites are changing the nature of friendship networks. Although social networking on the internet helps people to collect hundreds or even thousands of acquaintances, the researchers believe that face to face contact is nearly always necessary to form truly close friendships.

Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace do not help you make more genuine close friends, according to a survey by researchers who studied how the websites are changing the nature of friendship networks. Although social networking on the internet helps people to collect hundreds or even thousands of acquaintances, the researchers believe that face to face contact is nearly always necessary to form truly close friendships.”Although the numbers of friends people have on these sites can be massive, the actual number of close friends is approximately the same in the face to face real world,” said psychologist Will Reader, from Sheffield Hallam University.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/sep/11/facebook.myspace
http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/11/2029341.htm
http://uk.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUKL1064365820070910Also see:

Online networkers who click with 1,000 ‘friends’

MySpace and Facebook sites have created a fashion for collecting friends instead of stamps or coins, the conference was told. Users compete with one another to rack up more online friends than anyone else, listing them in the same way that they might show off a new car or the latest gadget.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2426229.ece

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