Why you might not have as many friends as you think do

Are you ready for a double header of misery and paranoia? Good, there’s one heading right your way

New research suggests that no matter how many friends you think you have, you’re wrong. And we’re not just talking Facebook pals. We’re talking have their actual phone number, would go for a glass of wine with them, probably know their birthday month if not the exact date, mates.

How depressing.

A study conducted by Tel Aviv University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests that a whopping 50 per cent of friendships are one sided.

‘It turns out that we’re very bad at judging who our friends are,’ said Dr. Erez Shmueli speaking to The Telegraph.

He continued: ‘We learned that we can’t rely on our instincts or intuition. There must be an objective way to measure these relationships.'

But how are we meant to measure the relationships with our friends? Send out a survey to all those we consider close asking them to rate us out of five? How likely they are to recommend us a pal? Suggest areas for improvement? Because our self-esteem is at Kanye West levels and can definitely take a knocking #lies.

The study did send out surveys though, to 600 students in America, Europe and Israel asking participants to rate their friendships and say if they thought the feelings were mutual. ‘We found that 95 percent of participants thought that their relationships were reciprocal,’ Shmueli said.

‘If you think someone is your friend, you expect him to feel the same way. But in fact that’s not the case — only 50 percent of those polled matched up in the bidirectional friendship category.’

But try not to go unfollowing everyone just yet. For each person who you think is your friend but isn’t, there’s another person who considers you a buddy that you might consider hiding in the changing room of Topshop to avoid.

Gah. Officially a bit bummed out now.