社交网络时代 “好友”虽多密友很少

Unrealistic? Researchers found that the number of very close friends people have is going down, despite Facebook and what popular sitcoms might say

In this age of Facebook and Twitter, we are all supposed to have hundreds of friends.

But in fact most of us have just two people we would consider to be close friends – down from an average of three 25 years ago, a study claims.

Researchers say this is no cause for concern. Instead, they claim that while some of us may be getting ‘more vulnerable’, many are simply becoming more adept at deciding who they can trust to be a close confidant.

The figure contrasts sharply with the race among the young to collect as many ‘friends’ as possible on social networking sites to prove their popularity.

According to Facebook the average user has 130 friends, but many of these are chance acquaintances or people they will never meet in real life.

But according to Matthew Brashears from the University of Cornwell, although this shrinking social network 'makes us potentially more vulnerable, we’re not as socially isolated as scholars had feared'.

For his study, Mr Brashears used data from a nationally representative experiment.

More than 2,000 adults ages 18 and older were surveyed from the nationally representative Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS) programme.

Mr Brashears found that 'modern discussion networks have decreased in size, which is consistent with other researchers' findings, but that social isolation has not become more prevalent'.

When asked to list the names of people they had discussed 'important matters' with over the previous six months, about 48 percent of participants listed one name, 18 percent listed two, and roughly 29 percent listed more than two names for these close friends.

On average, participants had 2.03 confidantes. And just over four percent of participants didn't list any names.

Female participants and those who were educated were the least likely to report no names on their confidante list.

(Read by Emily Cheng. Emily Cheng is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

双语资讯

(Agencies)

在这个Facebook和Twitter盛行的时代，按理说我们每人都应该有数百位朋友。

然而有研究称，事实上我们中的大多数人只有两个亲密的朋友，而25年前人均好友数量为3个。

研究人员认为并不需要为此担心。他们指出，尽管我们当中有一部分人可能会变得“更脆弱”，但很多人只是更善于判定自己能够信任的知己密友罢了。

这一数据和年轻人为了证明自己的人气争相在社交网站上加尽可能多的“好友”形成了强烈对比。

Facebook的数据显示，平均每位用户有130名“好友”，但这些“好友”中的许多人都是偶然认识的人，或根本不会在现实生活中遇见的人。

康威尔大学的马修•布莱希尔斯说，尽管缩小的好友圈子“可能会让我们更脆弱，但我们并不像学者们所担心的那样孤立”。

在他的研究中，布莱希尔斯采用了一项有全国代表性的实验的数据。

这一具有全国代表性的“社会科学项目分时实验”调查了2000多名年龄在18岁及以上的成人。

布莱希尔斯发现，“现代人进行实质讨论的圈子缩小了，这和其他研究人员的发现是一致的，但是并没有更多人因此变得孤立。”

当研究人员让参与者列出在过去六个月内和他们一起讨论“重要事情”的人时，约有48%的参与者列出一个名字，18%的人列出两个名字，约有29%的人在密友这一项列出两个以上的名字。

平均来看，参与者拥有2.03个知心好友。只有稍过4%的参与者没有列出任何名字。

女性参与者和那些受过教育的参与者在密友这一项没有列出任何名字的可能性最低。

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Vocabulary:

adept at: 善于

confidant: 知己；密友

time-sharing: 分时