Science Says Your Friends Are More Popular Than You

A new study suggests having friends who are more popular than you is just a fact of life.

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Complex Original

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It's now a fact of science: your friends are more popular than you—at least among your online friends. A new study out of McGill University published in the journal PLOS ONE found that it's just in the nature of online social networking that people will connect with people who are already much more popular than they are.

The study found that regardless of who it is, people tend to follow people on Twitter who already have larger followings than they do. The same was apparently true for Facebook, where the study's authors noted that people will friend others who have a quantity of friends that exceeds their own. Overall, people rarely connect with anyone who has fewer followers or friends than they do, but will with new friends who have about the same or more friends.

This is despite the fact that people tend to think they are superior to their friends in many ways. In a statement about the research provided to McGill, study co-author Naghmeh Momeni Taramsari said, "Most people tend to think that they are better than their friends when it comes to intelligence, memory, popularity, and other personal traits. In reality, our friends really have more friends than we do, on average. Moreover, our friends are more active (post more material), and are more influential (their posts are viewed and passed on more often)." This phenomenon is knows as the "Generalized Friendship Paradox."

Hurts a little, huh? 

The good news (if there is any) about finding out that your friends all have better online game is that few people are alone in this. The research found that almost 90 percent of social media users experience the Generalized Friendship Paradox, even among very popular and influential tweeters and Facebookers. So there's no need to get bummed out, it's just the way the hierarchy of social media, especially Twitter, functions.

Naghmeh Momeni Taramsari did not immediately reply to Complex's request for comment.

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