THE KEY TO BEING HAPPY

Quantity - Quality of friends - NOT

Having hundreds of friends on Facebook is no substitute for a handful of close friends in real life, a study has found. Researchers discovered that people with only a few friends were at least as happy as those with far more if many of theirs were online. The number of ‘peripheral others’ someone connected with online – former classmates and coworkers, for example – had no bearing on how satisfied they felt. Social media, the researchers said, has encouraged younger people to have larger but more impersonal networks of ‘friends’.

But instead of trying to amass friends, they added, a better cure for loneliness might be spending time with those you’re closest to. The number of close friends someone had appeared to be the only thing which influenced how satisfied they were with their social life. ‘Loneliness has less to do with the number of friends you have, and more to do with how you feel about your friends,’ said Dr Wändi Bruine de Bruin. ‘It’s often the younger adults who admit to having negative perceptions of their friends.

Loneliness occurs in people of all ages. ‘If you feel lonely, it may be more helpful to make a positive connection with a friend than to try and seek out new people to meet.’

TEENAGERS ‘HAVE FEWER FRIENDS THAN 20 YEARS AGO’

Modern teenagers have fewer friends than those 20 years ago, research has suggested, despite the increasing popularity of social media. A study carried out by the University of Queensland in Australia, found teens felt less lonely than two decades ago but that they have poorer social networks. A survey of more than 285,000 US high school students carried out between 1991 and 2012 found young people had fewer friends with whom to interact, but less desire for more friends.

The authors behind the study wrote: ‘Greater economic opportunities offer individuals more latitude to manage their own money, decide whom to date and decide whom to marry, reducing the influence of kin and giving people more autonomy, which may increase individualism.

‘Economic changes lead to increased individuality, which could lead to decreasing interest in friends, increasing selfreliance, increasing self-esteem and decreasing loneliness.’ The research was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin in 2015.

Having hundreds of friends on Facebook is no substitute for a handful of close friends in real life, a study has found