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Dublin: 9 °C Sunday 19 May, 2013

Why we add and remove Facebook friends

A new survey highlights the reasons behind our friendly – and no so friendly – behaviour on Facebook.

Billy no mates...
Billy no mates...
Image: Phil Hawksworth via Creative Commons/Flickr

WHETHER YOU APPROVE or not, the word “friend” is now used as a verb.

This is the world we live in.

Whatever your personal feelings may be about that, the reasons to friend a person on Facebook – or to defriend them – are many and varied, according to a new Nielsen study.

The top reason why a person friends someone else – perhaps unsurprisingly - is because they know them in real life. Meanwhile, the main reason for a person being dropped is due to offensive comments.

The top reasons why Facebook users…

Add friends

  • Know the person in real life (82 per cent)
  • Mutual friends (60 per cent)
  • Business networks (11 per cent)
  • Physical attractiveness (8 per cent)
  • Increasing friend count (7 per cent)
  • Friend everyone (7 per cent)
  • Quality of photo (7 per cent)
  • The other person’s friend count (4 per cent)

Remove friends

  • Offensive comments (55 per cent)
  • Don’t know person well (41 per cent)
  • Trying to sell something (39 per cent)
  • Depressing comments (23 per cent)
  • Lack of interaction (20 per cent)
  • Political comments (14 per cent)
  • Break-up or divorce (11 per cent)
  • Don’t like their friends (8 per cent)
  • Update profile too often (6 per cent)
  • They add too many people (6 per cent)
  • They don’t update enough (3 per cent)

In terms of personal relationships, the survey found that social media was most used for contacting family (89 per cent), to find or maintain old friendships (88 per cent) or to find new friends (70 per cent).

The survey revealed that men more likely to use social media for career or networking  opportunity, while women often use social media as a creative outlet.

Read: Social media use in Ireland no longer growing, poll finds>

Read: Love/hate: Mixed reaction to Facebook’s new timeline feature>

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Comments (20 Comments)

  • It wrecks my head when people put chain posts up on facebook. The kind of rubbish that goes: “In honour of all the baby angels that didnt make it: I’m asking if everyone could put this as their status for 1 hour please? I’m pretty sure I know the ones that will…………..”

    Our survey says: BLOCKED!

    Reply
  • ^^Copy this text and put it in your status if you know someone, or have heard of someone who knows someone. If you don’t know anyone, or even if you’ve just heard of someone who doesn’t know anyone, then still copy this. It’s important to spread the message.

    Reply
  • Remove them if they keep updating as to what they are doing throughout the day “ouch I hurt my finger” “soooo bored” “goin for drinkys with my girlys” that muck wrecks my head and ruins it for the rest of us!

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  • It’s the plethora of “never drinking again” posts every Sunday that gets on my wick and tempts me toward the delete button. Are you really that hungover.com, neverdrinkingagain.com or wrecked.com that you (a) need to tell the world and (b) think adding .com to your mood, physical condition or opinion adds any kind of emphasis?

    Reply
  • Some people go crazy on Facebook & live their life through it .. As I say it’s a status box not a tissue box ..

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  • That’s quite a large proportion of people who use Facebook to find new friends… I have never heard of someone doing that, seems like quite an odd platform for doing that.

    From time to time I cull the facebook friends purely because I don’t talk to them anymore and have zero interest in their life or thoughts on life. Sounds rude but in reality you know the people you want to keep in touch with otherwise the whole thing makes no sense.

    Reply
  • I hate all that “the awkward moment when” shite, or when somebody steals a joke and sets up a page as it.

    Reply
  • The world is full of fools …well all the ones that did not answer with cause I know them in real life, anyway

    Reply
  • I think they missed a reason for adding “friends”…. Stalking rights of “friends”!!

    Reply
  • I hate when people use ‘.com’ at the end of their status it F*cking p*sses me off big time

    Reply
  • I add people because I know them/they’re family/I like them/they make me lol. Wouldn’t have the highest friend count now, some people have thousands, which is mad altogether, Ted. Generally don’t refuse an add, either. If someone has taken the time, why not?

    I very rarely defriend, but I went on a spree there lately, one chap posted up about four times a day about his various pieces of body art, and the tribulations of putting them together. Another two or three were adding every small business out there and sharing their pictures with everyone else in an effort to win some innocuous prize. Another one from Kerry was a self styled political activist and utter bunny boiling lunatic. Surprised she hasn’t popped up here yet actually…

    Facebook, like everything else in internet land, shouldn’t be taken too seriously, and like anywhere else on the ‘net, the old adage of not putting anything up that you can’t stand over applies. Especially given Zuckerberg’s penchant for dispersing any info you give him.

    Reply
  • Titus d 22/12/11 #

    I deleted my Facebook account a year ago and it felt like my last day in school. Those people who I call my friends, I phone, text or actually meet them in person.. The people who are travelling or in Australia, I couldn’t care less about what Thai island they are sunning themselves on, in fact I don’t even want to know.

    Reply
  • Surely you don’t “friend” people…you “befriend” them?

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  • I console myself with the thought that, bad as it is, FB isn’t as bad as Twitter. It’s networking, Jim, but why call it “social”??

    Reply
  • The people who put up constant photos of there food, lunch dinner etc etc, gets on me tits, nobody gives a s**t, some are only short of showing photos of there brown trout in the toilet! I have lost one or two so called mates due to offensive status updates, mainly from the lovely sicki**dia website!

    Reply

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