Fed up of your mum posting round robins, people getting embroiled in hefty political debates without knowing the facts, out-and-out bigots or people from school who like to share every happening of their day on several social media outlets? Well, you’re not alone, because recent research shows the average person can’t bear most of the people we’re linked to on social media sites.
According to recent research done by 72Point for Tagstr, an app which encourages social media sharing with ‘no strings attached’, the average social media user would only want to hang out in real life with 27 % of their social media friends. It’s unsurprising, then, that the same research of 2,000 active social media users found that we wouldn’t consider 75% of our online mates as ‘real friends’. Which bodes well, as it shows that about 2% of our friends are people we want to hang out with, but don’t see enough. Maybe it’s time to get off of social media for a bit…
At least that would stop us getting so livid at our real friends if we took a little time out from our various social media platforms, because the survey also found that 26% of us have blocked at least one 'real friend’ in the past six months.
As for that no strings attached app, we’re not sure how much we’re buying it, but its 22-year-old creator, Michael Venn, explains it as a fun alternative to newsfeeds full of drivel created by people we don’t really like: ‘Tagstr is for modern explorers who want to truly engage, and share meaningful content with a wider network than simply old school pals or people they worked with, once upon a time.’
Good point. But another social media outlet to keep up with when we’re already inundated with updates from people we don’t like? Maybe we should do what 26% of the respondents – all young people – have considered, and delete our Facebook or Twitter altogether! Or just mute the worst culprits for a bit...
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
Picture: Rory DCS
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.