October 18, 2011

expert reaction to study of Facebook networks and brain structure

A new study revealed an association between the size of certain brain regions and the number of friends a person has on social network sites.

Dr Heidi Johansen-Berg, Reader in Clinical Neurology at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain (FMRIB), said:

“The study shows an intriguing relationship between two variables but does not test cause and effect. Increasing your Facebook friends does not make your brain grow. If you got yourself 100 new Facebook friends today then your brain would not be bigger tomorrow.

“A key question is what does the number of Facebook friends you have say about you? The study found only a weak relationship between the number of Facebook friends and number of real-world friends. (Although this relationship is statistically significant, the correlation score suggests that only about 15% of the variation in the number of real life friends you have could be predicted by the number of Facebook friends you have.) Perhaps the number of Facebook friends you have is more strongly related to how much time you spend on the internet, how old you are, or what mobile phone you have.

“The study cannot tell us whether using the internet is good or bad for our brains.”

‘Online social network size is reflected in human brain structure’ by Ryota Kanai et al., published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B on Wednesday 19th October.