Social networking aside, how many close friends do you have?

By Dilip -
A quarter of a century ago, before Facebook, back in the day when you had to be indoors to phone somebody, we had an average of three friends each. The study – by Time Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS for short, and I'd definitely like to be her friend, she sounds fun) defined friends as close confidantes, people to whom you can tell anything. And now, when we're Facebooked and Twittered up to our eyebrows, when we feel as if we've spent 40 days and nights in the desert after a half hour on the underground, how many friends do we have (expectant drumroll…)? Two. Not 857, after all. (And while we're here, "friended" is not really a verb.)

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