We may "friend" more people on Facebook, but we have fewer real friends-the kind who would help us out in tough times, listen sympathetically no matter what, lend us money, or keep a secret if we shared one.
. He is a Cornell University sociologist who surveyed more than 2,000 adults and found that from 1985 to 2010, the number of truly close friends has dropped even though we're socializing as much as ever. On average, participants listed 2. 03 close friends in his survey. . "These are the people you think of as your real friends, your go-to people if you need something," Brashears said.
Brashears asked people online from a database called TESS-Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences-to list the names of people with whom they had discussed "important matters" over the previous six months. 48 percent of participants listed one close friend when asked, 28 percent listed two and 19 percent listed more. He reports the results in the journal Social Networks.
Brashears said his survey can't tell us conclusively (确定地), but his guess is that while we meet just as many people as we used to, we sort them differently.
Does that suggest we're more isolated in these times when we seem to meet more people online than in person? Social scientists say Facebook may actually be healthy for us. Keith Hampton from the University of Pennsylvania wrote a report. "Internet, or Facebook users have more close relationships than other people. They get more overall social support than other people. " wrote Hampton in his blog post.
But online contact and personal contact are different. While Hampton reports we know more people because of Face-book, Brashears reports there are fewer whom we choose to trust with our most intimate worries.
A. What's the reason behind them?
B. What's the meaning of the survey?
C. That's the conclusion made by Matthew Brashears.
D. The report reflected issues behind the phenomenon.
E. At the same time, a little more than 4 percent didn't list anyone.
F. Compared with 3 in a previous study, the number was down by one point.
G. And in particular they report more emotional support and companionship.
