The number of friends a person has on Facebook correlates with the size of particular regions in the brain, and may be a reflection of how many “real-world” friends people are likely to have, according to new research from University College London (UCL).
The study is not causal, meaning the researchers cannot conclude whether some people naturally have more friends and larger sizes of the particular brain regions, or whether having more “virtual” friends makes the brain regions larger.
“Online social networks are massively influential, yet we understand very little about the impact they have on our brains,” said researcher Geraint Rees in a press release. “This has led to a lot of unsupported speculation that the Internet is somehow bad for us.”
The team looked at brain scans of 125 university students, who are all Facebook users, and compared the data against the size of their friend networks, both online and in the real world. They replicated their findings in another group of 40 students.
They found a strong correlation between the number of Facebook friends and the amount of gray matter in four brain regions, including the amygdala, which helps process memory and emotions.
The size of the other three regions also correlated with online social networks, but seemingly not with real-world networks.
One of these, the superior temporal sulcus, aids perception of moving objects, while another, the entorhinal cortex, has been linked to memory and navigation, including through online social networks. Lastly, the middle temporal gyrus is implicated in perception of social cues.
“We have found some interesting brain regions that seem to link to the number of friends we have—both ’real‘ and ’virtual,'” said study co-author Ryota Kanai in the release.
“The exciting question now is whether these structures change over time—this will help us answer the question of whether the Internet is changing our brains.”
As well as examining brain structure, the researchers also investigated whether there was a link between the size of a person’s online friend network and their real-world network.
The students’ responses to the study questions imply that the number of online friends relates to the number of real world friends they have.
“Our findings support the idea that most Facebook users use the site to support their existing social relationships, maintaining or reinforcing these friendships, rather than just creating networks of entirely new, virtual friends,” Rees said.
“Our study will help us begin to understand how our interactions with the world are mediated through social networks,” Rees explained. “This should allow us to start asking intelligent questions about the relationship between the internet and the brain—scientific questions, not political ones.”
Another study recently showed that the amygdala is also larger in people with a bigger network of real-world friends.
The study, “Online social network size is reflected in human brain structure,” was published online in Proceedings of the Royal Society B on Oct. 19
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