Thursday, October 11, 2012

Analysing my Facebook Friends

As the title suggest, I recently analysed my Facebook Friends.

Why?

I was starting to feel like everyone I know was either talking about a wedding or new addition to the family. So I decided to see what the stats were really like.



Let me start by saying I have 187 Facebook Friends (FF). That number is probably lower than average but includes only family and people I have spoken to 'recently'. I performed a huge cull and removed 200-300 people from my list about six months ago, my News Feed has never looked better. Sadly, one my FF is no longer with us, so the following stats are from 186 people.


As you can see, most of my FF are family or from uni/high school. Friends of friends is also a big category and all are people I know original through someone else (girls on my netball team for example or close friends of my sisters). The family category is so large because I include all my cousins (and long term partners) and future in-laws.
There are a lot of girls in the group. Whether that's because I'm female or because more girls appear to be on Facebook is hard to tell.
The generation split is hardly surprising. I have two Friends from the silent generation, one is my Nanna. She doesn't post very often but likes to read her News Feed to check up on the grand kids. No Generation Z, mostly because the kids I know under 13 have parents that don't think it's necessary.
Onto the fun stuff. I appear to know a lot of married people, though it's reasonably safe to assume that most of those above Gen Y are included in that group.

Looking just at Gen Y things are a little different. Still a pretty big piece of the pie there though.

Have to admit the data may be skewed a little when you consider that if I'm friends with a married person, a lot of the time I'm also friends with their spouse...but still, lots of married people under 30.

I had a graph for people with kids from all generations but it's a bit silly when that would include both my parents and my Nanna and hardly counts the same.

A smaller wedge of people from my generation with kids. The actual number is 23. I only know 23 people from my generation with kids...guess it just feels like a lot because they have more to post about than all the singletons I know.

If I could be bothered I'd work out some way to analyse my news feed and work out who's posting the most often...but I can't.

At least this was enough to remind me that I know more unmarried, childless people around my age than I think. Do you think you'd be the same?

7 comments:

  1. Oh you have inspired me to cull some 'friends' off my list. It is interesting to see all the places your friends come from. I think I have a huge amount from high school that I never talk to, but feel obligated to accept.

    I think my friends are half settling down, half single and childless.

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  2. This is so good!

    I only have 147 friends and I think some can be culled! I think a vast majority would be unmarried/no kids though.

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  3. This is really really cool.

    I am fascinated, and I kind of want to replicate, but I suck at graphs, so it probably isn't the greatest idea.

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  4. haha this is very cool! i dont have the patience to analyse my friends and make a graph out of it, but its an interesting idea!

    i tend to just 'hide' people from my news feed rather than delete them, incase i need to contact them haha. especially those people that brag about everything...or talk about their awesome lives overseas... or how they have an awesome job... etc!!

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  5. i have 160. but have hidden about 155 of them so it feels like way less! a lot of the people i've hidden are people i can't delete as it would cause issues in social situations so they just stay hidden...

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  6. I'm due for a Facebook friend cull soon. Sounds harsh hahaha but realistically probably even half of my 'friends', I haven't spoken to in years.

    K xx

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  7. I think mine would be ... 30% pole dancers. Hence i always get bombarded with pole pics and not baby/wedding/engaged to be engaged ones.

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