An American study of 10,000 students found that if you make more friends than the average person at school, you’ll receive a higher salary in later life. People need good social skills at work to work in a team successfully. 【小题1】

On average, teenagers aged between 15 and 17 have 500 “friends” on their favorite social networking sites. Adults have 130. So if you believe this research, you might be very rich.

【小题2】 Dunbar, a professor from the University of Oxford, studied the number of messages between users of a popular social networking website, each of whom had between 200 and 2,000 friends. He found that they always communicate with a maximum of 150 people.

Among these 150, around 5 people are close friends. 【小题3】 They are probably old friends and you share all your good and bad experiences with them. Then there are 10 more friends. Although they’re close to you, you may not keep in touch with them every week. Next there are 35 people who you might spend time with because of a shared interest. 【小题4】 You see or speak to these people at least once a year, but you don’t know them well. Beyond this number, Dunbar says, it’s impossible to make any relationship meaningful.

If you have a lot of online “friends”, try this experiment: First take away anyone you haven’t been in touch with for a year. Then remove those you cannot remember and, finally, take away friends who you wouldn’t mind losing touch with. How many have you left? How many of these people are actually good friends? 【小题5】