Facebook always has focus on the positive, there is no do not like, or dislike. Similarly Facebook calls everyone friends, then Facebook groups friends into different categories like acquaintances, close friends, etc which effectively results in similar functionality as Google plus circles.
Lately there has been a surge in the amount of research published with regards growth of online social media and the analysis of all things online and social. Without boring you with the sometimes long and tedious analysis of sometimes biased and gamed data, here are the major similarities that seems to be evenly similar enough to be regarded as factual:
The average amount of social connections for youth between 18 and 25 years of age is over 400, as the age increases the amount of connections decrease and the average friends for ages 18 to 35 is just over 300 connections. It then drops outside the regular curve of decline which makes me believe that factors such as not growing up with technology, is a factor. The average rate of connection (or friend) decline as age increases seems to be between 8 and 9 per year.
So currently, as you get older your connections decrease. Statistically, you live long enough you will end up with no friends. Of course this will not be the case in the real world, but it is still early days for social media. The connection between school performance, IQ and educational achievement decline as social media consumption increases, could still result in future generations imposing strict and draconian limitations on media consumption during developmental years, but that is an entirely new article…