上学时的“朋友圈”意味着什么？

陕西 张小琴

一项研究表明，在学校交朋友多的人未来会更长寿、更富有。 事实果真如此吗？

题材教育体裁说明文文章词数 难度 建议用时364 ★★★ 7 分钟

Researchers in Australia studied 1,500 people and their lifestyles and have found that having good friends can help you live longer. An American study of 10,000 students also found that if you make more friends than the average(普通的) 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.These are the same skills we use to make friends at school.

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

However,according to Professor Robin Dunbar from the University of Oxford, it probably won't make any difference. Dunbar 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 (最大量) of 150 people.

Among these 150, Dunbar believes that around five people are close friends. You've most likely known them for a long time; they are probably old friends and you share all your good and bad experiences with them. Then there are ten 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.You aren't close to them. And finally, there's a large group of 100. You see or speak to these people at least once a year, but you don't know them well. Beyond(超出) 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 peo ple you can't 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? According to the research, these are the only people that really matter.

Reading Check

1. What are the studies mentioned in the first paragraph mainly about?

A. The number of friends you should have.

B. The advantages of having a lot of friends.

C. Some social skills you may need at work.

D. Some useful advice on how to make friends.

2. According to the American study, the most popular students at school ______.

A. are likely to spend more money B. may not be as popular as they're at work

C. seem to get better-paid jobs D. will work harder in later years

3. What does the underlined part “this number” in paragraph 4 refer to?

A. 10. B. 35. C. 100. D. 150.

4. What does the text mainly want to show?

A. You need to spend more time with your friends.

B. There is a lot of research on the influence of friends.

C. Friends are sometimes more important than family.

D. It's more important to have good friends than lots of friends.

Language Study

Difficult sentence

Dunbar studied the number of messages between users of a popular social networking website,each of whom had between 200 and 2,000 friends. 邓巴研究了一个受欢迎的社交网站的使用者之间的信息数量。 他们每个人的朋友数量都在200到2,000之间。

【点石成金】the number of...意为“……的数量”，作主语时谓语用三单形式。 whom引导的是非限制性定语从句，先行词为users。