Brain Activities Show There Is Nothing Like a Real Friend in Contrast to Influencers and Other Celebrities

Abstract

Especially for young people, influencers and other celebrities followed on social media evoke affective closeness that in their young minds seems real even though it is fake. Such fake friendships are potentially problematic because of their felt reality on the consumer side while lacking any inversely felt true closeness. The question arises if the unilateral friendship of a social media user is equal or at least similar to real reciprocal friendship. Instead of asking social media users for explicit responses (conscious deliberation), the present exploratory study aimed to answer this question with the help of brain imaging technology. Thirty young participants were first invited to provide individual lists including (i) twenty names of their most followed and loved influencers or other celebrities (fake friend names), (ii) twenty names of loved real friends and relatives (real friend names) as well as (iii) twenty names they do not feel any closeness to (no friend names). They then came to the Freud CanBeLab (Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience and Behavior Lab) where they were shown their selected names in a random sequence (two rounds), while their brain activities were recorded via electroencephalography (EEG) and later calculated into event-related potentials (ERPs). We found short (ca. 100 ms) left frontal brain activity starting at around 250 ms post-stimulus to process real friend and no friend names similarly, while both ERPs differed from those elicited by fake friend names. This is followed by a longer effect (ca. 400 ms), where left and right frontal and temporoparietal ERPs also differed between fake and real friend names, but at this later processing stage, no friend names elicited similar brain activities to fake friend names in those regions. In general, real friend names elicited the most negative going brain potentials (interpreted as highest brain activation levels). These exploratory findings represent objective empirical evidence that the human brain clearly distinguishes between influencers or other celebrities and close people out of real life even though subjective feelings of closeness and trust can be similar. In summary, brain imaging shows there is nothing like a real friend. The findings of this study might be seen as a starting point for future studies using ERPs to investigate social media impact and topics such as fake friendship.

Keywords: celebrity; electroencephalography; event-related potential (ERP); fake friendship; friend; influencer; non-conscious processing; social media.

Figure 1

Event-related potentials (ERPs) calculated for every single electrode location. Most dominant effects occurred at frontotemporal and temporoparietal brain regions. The selected electrodes are marked with blue ellipses. See Figure 2 that shows ERPs from those four electrode locations magnified.

Figure 2

Overlaid event-related potentials (ERPs) for each of the three social name conditions at the four selected electrode locations FT9 and TP9 (left hemisphere) and FT10 and TP10 (right hemisphere). Marked in light red color are the time windows showing significant social name effects. The peak of the early left frontotemporal effect ranges from 300 ms to 320 ms and the late overall effect ranges from 400 ms to 700 ms.

Figure 3

Topographical maps including data from all electrode locations created for all three name conditions, fake friend names, real friend names and no friend names. Maps on the left were created for a time point representing the early effect (300 ms). Maps on the right were created for a time point representing the late effect (500 ms). Note that the left maps show similar topographies for real friend names and no friend names (including a left frontotemporal region; marked by red circles), whereas the right maps show that real friend names elicited most negative brain amplitudes compared to both other conditions slightly later (marked by red circles).