Strange but true: your friends have more friends than you do

Whoever was first at the coffee machine got a cup. Both black, on the strongest setting, and I (back then) with a little sugar. Outside in the corner of the schoolyard was our regular spot, because I had to smoke two Marlboro Lights in a quarter of an hour. I'm done with that last part, but luckily I still have that high school friend. Yet some friends also disappeared from my life. I have a select club left, and they each feel like family. But it seems that they have more friends than I do (?). This phenomenon is known as: the friendship paradox.

Sociologist Scott L. Feld was the first to come up with this theory. Most of your friends have more friends than you do. That makes you think, because is that true? Maybe it is. This is where the law of large groups comes into play, which can be calculated with a whole series of formulas that I won't bore you with. It simply comes down to the fact that people with many friends are friends with more people, like for example with you. Only they are then less well acquainted with all the extra friends they have.

It even seems that this friendship paradox can already be seen on social media. The more friends you have on, for example, Facebook, the more logical it is that your friends have even more. Although I wonder if unfriending is also a consequence of reality? I believe that, just like on social media, I have had a few rounds of unfriending in my life. I lost most of my elementary school friends out of sight in high school. Those from high school disappeared again during my college years. And not everyone from my college years stuck around in the life I have now. In all those phases, a few remained, of whom I am now very protective. What am I saying? With those friends, I want to drink young gin behind the geraniums and live in the same corridor in the nursing home.

The friendship paradox actually goes further than just friends, because the theory is that your sexual partners have had more sexual partners than you have. Which might come even closer to the truth than the paradox about my friends. Although we can never be completely sure about this, because the fact is that those numbers are still being fiddled with. In just about every conceivable aspect.