The truth about social media friendships
I don’t know about you, but my Facebook account is an eclectic mix of people. Close friends, family, old work friends, acquaintances, and people I haven’t even met in person. Twitter is even less than that. It’s a forum to chat with others, not my close friends. On a day when people will delete a friend or two due to conflicting views on politics, we thought we would look at the truth about social media friendships.
Brits count 5% of social media followers as ‘close friends
Research commissioned by Diet Coke found that Brits have an average of between 100- 200 social media followers, yet only 3-5 who they would consider ‘close’ friends offline.
– 69% desire more face time with friends over connecting on social media (11%)
– 23% claim it takes just 10-25 likes to increase their confidence
Get The Gang Back Together
The research* was commissioned to celebrate Diet Coke’s Get The Gang Back Together campaign. It found that despite the continued dominance of social media, what we all really yearn for is quality face-to-face time with our friends. When asked about their preferred means of communication with friends, 69% opted for catching up in person rather than via social media (11%), group chats (8%), text message (8%) or phone call (3%).
Social media appears to be playing a significant role in forming friendships in the first place. Over half of Brits (54%) claim to have met up with someone they originally met on social media. 44% say they made a new best friend thanks to their online networks. Social media is also proving to be a necessary source of confidence for many. 23% admit that it takes just 10-25 likes to make us feel valued by our online friends. 60% also stated that getting likes helps to boost their confidence.
Natalie Whitehead-Farr, Senior Brand Manager for Coca-Cola Great Britain, added, “Diet Coke is all about celebrating those amazing moments we have with our friends”.
“The rise of social media means that we can communicate with our friends easily, and it is also a great tool for meeting new people. However, it is encouraging to see that we all value the opportunity to share good times in person, which is what we call for people to do more.”
This year, Diet Coke launched the Get The Gang Back Together campaign.
Celebrating and encouraging the amazing moments friends share when they are together. #ItStartedWithADietCoke
*Statistics are taken from a survey of 2,008 UK adults aged between 18-50, commissioned by Diet Coke and conducted by Morar in April 2017.
