Facebook the social networking site that started off as a Web site that allowed college students to keep tabs on each other does not help you make more genuine close friends according to a current research study.
Mark Zuckerbergfounded “The Facebook” in February 2004, while attending Harvard University, as of July 2007 it had expanded to 34million users world wide.
Previous research studies on friendships have consistently found that most people have five very close friends but larger numbers of people who they connect with less regularly. Scientists believe this number is determined by the cognitive constraints of keeping up with large numbers of people. Modern technologies have made communication much easier. Psychologists at Sheffield Hallam University are contributing to a major study assessing how IT affects how we interact socially and at work.
In this particular study Dr. William Reader,  the lead researcher at Sheffield Hallam University used a sample of  200 people they were asked to complete a questionnaire about their online networking. The study asked questions such as how many online friends they had, how many were close friends and how many they had met face to face.
In the British Association Festival of Sciences in York, this week  Dr. Reader described how that the ease of communicating online enabled people to broaden their list of nodding acquaintances. Sites like Facebook and MySpace allow users to post information to multiple users making it easier to maintain these type of social networks.
However he contends that trust is integral to real friendship, ” we need to be absolutely sure that a person is really going to invest in us, to be there when we need them…Its very easy to be deceptive on the Internet.
In a four year study the psychologists at Sheffield Hallam University will look at a how modern communications such as the internet, email, texting ,instant messaging , blogs and social networking websites such as Facebook affect our relationships at home and at work.
Source; Sheffield Hallam University.
