You know that person - the one who drives you crazy on Facebook?
But yet you can’t quite bring yourself to click onto their profile, hover over to the ‘Friends’ box, click on the little arrow, scroll down to unfriend and click with pure contempt.
Why is that?
Well, according to a study published in the British Psychological Society, is all comes down to their social status.
The research conducted by Sarah Buglass, a PhD student in the School of Social Sciences at Nottingham Trent University, concludes that although social media users find certain friends jarring or trouble making, they are worried of ‘repercussions’ if they cut digital ties, as their nemises appears to be well connected.
Basically, it’s the cyber version of the playground run by cool kids and bullies.
Sarah explained: “People are spending more and more time online making them more vulnerable to potentially damaging social tension and disagreements. Our study explored the characteristics of people who might be more likely to cause this sort of trouble in an online social network."
In her research, she analysed the relationship characteristics of over 5,000 network contacts from over 50 Facebook users.
In the experiment, each user was asked to assess 100 of their connections selected at random in terms of online disagreement (with self and others), relational closeness and communication frequency (online and offline).
And what the results showed was that so-called ‘troublemakers’ of Facebook also happened to be socially butterflies, proving popular on social media, but less so in real life; meaning the participants may interact with them on Facebook, but rarely see them in flesh and blood.
So although they had very little fabric for a genuine friendship with someone, they felt compelled to ‘keep an eye’ on them digitally. Perhaps even to avoid disagreement with them, especially for the 19 – 21 age group, who found themselves in the more confrontations online. Eep!
Sarah concluded:
"Facebook users appear to be harbouring known online troublemakers on their Facebook networks. While some were not averse to reporting the online indiscretions of others to the service provider, many more choose to merely ignore them.
"It appears that they don't want to communicate with the troublemakers online for risk of damaging their own reputation, but at the same time they don't appear to want to unfriend them either.
"The social repercussions of unfriending someone reach far beyond the boundaries of the online network. People don't want to risk causing offline tension with their friends, family members or colleagues by disconnecting them from their online lives. Remaining online friends with troublemakers appears to be a social necessity for some."
Well, you know what they say, keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
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