I’ve never understood why people choose to crop their list of friends on Facebook. Sometimes, I’ll see statements like, “If you see this message, congratulations, you made the cut.” It makes me wonder if I really want to associate with someone who willy-nilly cuts friends out of his life.
Sure, I understand deleting friends because of personality issues. Deleting friends “just because”, though, is petty. It also can have real-world consequences.
A new study from the University of Colorado Denver shows that 40 percent of people surveyed would avoid anyone in real life that deleted them from a friends list on Facebook.
“The cost of maintaining online relationships is really low, and in the real world, the costs are higher,” said study author Christopher Sibona, a doctoral student in the Computer Science and Information Systems program at the University of Colorado Denver Business School. “In the real world, you have to talk to people, go see them to maintain face-to-face relationships. That’s not the case in online relationships.”
Sibona says that when a friendship ends in real life, it usually just fades away. It’s more abrupt on Facebook.
“Since it’s done online there is an air of unreality to it but in fact there are real life consequences,” he said. “We are still trying to come to grips as a society on how to handle elements of social media. The etiquette is different and often quite stark.”
Sibona conducted a study in 2010 on why people delete friends. He found four main reasons.
- Frequent, unimportant posts.
- Polarizing posts usually about politics or religion.
- Inappropriate posts involving sexist, racist remarks
- Boring everyday life posts about children, food, spouses etc.
He says that when people are socially excluded in real life, they experience lower self-esteem, depressed moods, and loneliness.
“People who are unfriended may face similar psychological effects…because unfriending may be viewed as a form of social exclusion,” Sibona said. “The study makes clear that unfriending is meaningful and has important psychological consequences for those to whom it occurs.”
Remember that the next time you get a hankering to chop down your friends list. You’re doing more damage than you think.
(Story materials from the University of Colorado Denver / David Kelly. Image via Flickr: Gina Trapani / Creative Commons.)
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