Oxford University Study: Having More Facebook Friends Doesn't Mean Real Best Friends Forever

A new Oxford University study has found that just because someone has a lot of "Facebook friends," it does not necessarily mean that they have a lot of friends in real life. The study found some interesting links between people's Facebook friends and real friends.

The study was done by professor Robin Dunbar, famous for his "Dunbar number," which shows that in the real world people can only maintain around 150 stable relationships of multiple types.

For his latest study, he looked at 3,375 Facebook users with ages ranging from 18 to 65. He found that 14 out of the 150 average Facebook friends showed sympathy for the user in real life, with only five friends on the popular social media site being considered true, close friends.

The study also found a pretty big difference between the age groups and numbers of total friends on the site. The 18 to 24 age group had an average of 282 friends, with older age groups staying around a 150 "friend" average.

Interestingly, Dunbar found that the number of "true" friends stayed about the same for those that had more Facebook friends. The study says:

"Respondents who had unusually large networks did not increase the numbers of close friendships they had, but rather added more loosely defined acquaintances into their friendship circle simply because most social media sites do not allow one to differentiate between these layers."

Dunbar also noted that relationships tend to have a "natural decay rate" that social media seems to slow down. However, he advises not relying solely on digital media to keep friendships intact. He says face-to-face meetings are still ultimately the best way to do that.

"It may be that face-to-face meetings are required from time to time to prevent friendships, in particular, sliding down through the network layers and eventually slipping over the edge...into the category of acquaintances," he warns.