There's A Reason Your Friends Have More Friends Than You

In 2012, Pew Research found that while the typical Facebook user had 245 Facebook friends, the average *friend* someone has on Facebook had 359.

That sounds completely illogical at first. But it’s explained by the “friendship paradox,” a term resulting from sociologist Professor Scott Feld’s 1991 paper. 

The phenomenon has since been translated into mathematical theories. 

But what exactly is this “friendship paradox”, and what does it actually mean for our social lives?

What is the friendship paradox?

In a Purdue University video, Prof Feld said he was “surprised” to find “that it’s always true in social networks that ...