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Key points
- The “friendship paradox” states, that on average, the number of friends each of your friends has is more than the number of friends you have.
- The friendship paradox applies to social media, too. People tend to follow others who have larger followings and more engagement than them.
- The "generalized friendship paradox" applies the same methodology to explain why your friends are also wealthier and more attractive than you.
In 1991, sociologist Scott Feld introduced the concept of the “friendship paradox” which states that, on average, the number of friends each of your friends has is more than the number of friends you have.
The key word to consider, however, is average. Meaning, not every single friend of yours has more friends than you. Some will have fewer, but some, say the popular social butterfly types, will have significantly more. In effect, their outsized social circles give a generous boost to the average number of friends for your own group.
In 2016, researchers observed this same phenomenon on social media after analyzing follower and following counts and engagement among 5.8 million Twitter users. The results showed that individuals were more likely to follow people who had more followers and had more engagement on their posts than they did. In fact, people rarely ever followed others who had smaller networks than them.
Recently, mathematicians developed new equations to illustrate how the paradox was even more pronounced in social groups with larger discrepancies in the number of friends each person has. For example, a friend group that has one person who has two friends and another friend who has 100 clearly displays a stronger friendship paradox effect than a friend group of five, where the most popular friend has 10 friends while the least popular one has three friends.
Again, averages don’t tell the whole story—in fact, they can be downright misleading.
A variation of the paradox, called the “generalized friendship paradox” goes beyond popularity, suggesting, on average, in addition to being more popular than you, your friends are richer and better-looking, too. After all, popular people generally tend to be more attractive and have more money than those who are unpopular. And popular people attract other popular people.
The researchers who generalized the paradox in 2014, determined that the paradox could apply to a variety of situations and characteristics, including their own work. The results of their study, in fact, indicated that their co-authors had more co-authors, more citations, and more publications than they each had.
As appealing as being popular and having lots of friends might seem, it's worth thinking twice about its true value. Research suggests that the average person can only maintain five close relationships and 132 acquaintances at one time. This begs the question, are you really “friends” with the other hundreds or thousands of people you think you know?
