By Pat Kelly. Researchers have discovered that using Facebook has a direct influence on brain structures and have shown a direct correlation between the amount of online ‘friends’ and real-life friends.
The team from University College London (UCL) used MRI scans to analyse the brains of 165 college students who were members of the social networking site. As well as a “strong correlation” between the amount of Facebook ‘friends’ and a real-life social network, the authors discovered a link between the volume of grey matter in some regions of the brain, notably the amygdala.
However the right superior temporal sulcus, which helps in the perception of biological objects, the left-middle temporal gyrus (perception of social cues) and right entorhinal cortex (memory and navigation) were also affected — none of these were associated with friendships in real-life situations.
“Taken together, our findings show that the number of social contacts declared publicly on a major web-based social networking site was strongly associated with the structure of focal regions of the human brain,” said the authors at UCL. “Specifically, we found that variation in the number of friends on Facebook strongly and significantly predicted grey matter volume in the left MTG, right STS and right entorhinal cortex.”
On the correlation between the respective ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ networks of friends, they concluded: “This supports the claim that most internet users employ online social network services to support pre-existing social relationships, maintaining, reinforcing of otherwise solidifying existing online relationships.”
They noted, however, that college students were chosen because of the strong tendency of this demographic to use online resources. “It remains to be seen whether such a strong predictive relationship [between the size of online ‘friendships’ and real-world social networks] also holds for other age or demographic groups.”
Facebook currently has more than 750 million members, including 38 per cent of the UK’s adult population.
The full study is free to download at http://bit.ly/piazgI.
pat.kelly@imt.ie
About Pat Kelly
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