Thenumber of friends we have on the social network Facebookit is proportional to the size of certain regions of our brain. This is deduced from a study carried out by scientists from the Institute of Cognitive Neurosciences at University College London (United Kingdom), who scanned the brains of 125 university students who were Facebook users and compared the results with the size of their groups of friends, both in the social network as in the real world. On average the participants had 300 friends, although the most “connected” comprised up to 1,000 different contacts in their network.
The results showed that the greater the number of contacts a person has on Facebook, the greater the volume of gray matter in four brain regions, including the amygdala, associated with emotional response and memory, as well as other key areas to identify the signals that occur during communication with other people.
As a result of the study, “the question that arises is whether these structures change over time, and your answer will help us to knowif the internet is changing our brain“, assures Ryota Kanai, co-author of the article published by the magazineProceedings of the Royal Society B.
On the other hand, the researchers examined whether there was a relationship between the size of the social network of friendson-line and intimate contacts in the real world. To do this, a group of volunteers answered questions such as “How many people can you send a text message to about celebrating an event (birthday, a new job, etc.)?”, “How many friends do you have on your agenda? ” or “How many friends from college or university could I have a conversation with now?” Responses indicated thatthe majority of Facebook users use the platform to support their existing social relationships, maintaining or reinforcing them, and not only to create networks of new virtual friends.
