A BIG BAG OF BULLSH!T! THE MORE FRIENDS YOU HAVE ON FACEBOOK THE BIGGER YOUR BRAIN IS!

Wondering whether you should send that friend request? A new study suggests your brain could benefit if you do.

British neuroscientists from the University College London have found a direct correlation between the number of Facebook friends a person has and the size of certain areas of that person’s brain.

The study, originally published in the journals proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences, was carried out on 125 university students who actively use Facebook. The results were mapped using brain imaging and then replicated in another group of 40 students.

According to the results, brain areas like the amygdala, which is linked to social skills, emotional reasoning and recognition, contained more grey matter in people with more Facebook friends.

"Online social networks are massively influential, yet we understand very little about the impact they have on our brains," Professor Geraint Rees, who co-authored the study, said in a statement, reported ABC News. "This has led to a lot of unsupported speculation the Internet is somehow bad for us."

While the study's aim was to show the effect of social media on our brains, one limitation was that researchers couldn't figure out which came first- whether larger social networks caused more grey matter, or more grey matter caused larger social networks.

"It is also possible, as it is with any correlation, that there's a third factor that's driving it, that's driving the changes in brain structure and the number of friends," Rees said. "The significance isn't so much that it tells the whole story, but it gives us a way to answer important questions."

The effect of the Internet on our brains has always been an area of debate, and researchers hope this study will help shed some light on the issue.

"The exciting question now is whether these [brain] structures change over time," said Ryota Kanai, lead author of the study, ABC News reported. "This will help us answer the question of whether the Internet is changing our brains."



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