Seven years from now, a new study reports, your friend group will probably look entirely different, even though it’ll still be the same size. Utrecht University sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst surveyed 604 people about their friends and again seven years later, and found that only 48 percent of people’s original friends were still part of their network after that time period. How will social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter affect the rate of friend turnover in the next seven years? [%comments]
Friend Turnover
TAGS: friendship
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I make new friends and some fall away, but the core group tends to stick hard. My closest friends have been my friends for at least a decade, with the longest for nearly 30 years.
I relocated a year ago, and picked up a couple of new folks in the new location, but the phone (rather than “networking” sites) keeps my old friends close.
“How will social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter affect the rate of friend turnover in the next seven years? ”
Facebook, emails and twitter make it easier to keep in touch, but I reckon on the whole your facebook/twitter friend list will increase, but your actual “core group” of close friends will remain the same sort of size…
Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
I had a huge party for my 40th birthday with about 70 people. I had a huge party again on my 50th with about the same number. I was the only one at both parties.
perhaps I am in the minority, but I still have my high school buddies (somewhere between friends and friendly), my best-friend (my husband). Have recently become re-acquainted with a neighbor friend- from growing up. My oldest and dearest friend- well- that is another story. And then there are people with whom I have been friendly for years–Otherwise, I wish that I could say that I had “new friends.” To me, there is a big difference between friendly and friendship. Real friends stay friends. The rest, are like “sands through the hour glass.” They come and go.
That seems really wrong to me. In the past 15 years, I’ve lost some friends (to death, divorce, weird relationships with women who couldn’t tolerate me, some friends have become less close, some more close, but my friendship circle overlaps probably 90%. Granted I’m 40, not 20. My circle changed a lot around the end of high school, end of college, end of graduate school. Now that I’m settled in, with a job, a house, kids, and all that, my friends have remained, and I expect them to remain over the next decade as well.
Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking tools help to acquire and maintain weak social ties, not close emotional relationships. Rate of turnover in friends circles is largely independent of social networking tools.