Face-to-face time trumps online friends

Kathleen Bugnitz. Photo / Steven McNicholl

Despite having more than a thousand Facebook friends, Kathleen Bugnitz says she spends more time socialising in real life.

A Facebook member since 2007, the 22-year-old thought she spent about one hour a day using the site and about three hours catching up with "real world" friends.

"I don't really sit on it all day, I get notifications to my iPad and I'll check those. But I don't really spend that long on it at all. I work quite a lot too so I don't really have that much free time to get online."

However Miss Bugnitz, who works in an Auckland bar, admitted that she would spend much more time on Facebook if she worked in an office.

Miss Bugnitz came to Auckland from Tennessee last July and said the move helped her gather an impressive collection of online friends.

"I went to a really big school so there's quite a few from there and I like meeting people who end up adding me. Also, my last name is Bugnitz so it's pretty easy to find me on Facebook."

Scrolling through her list of friends, Miss Bugnitz said she knew each one of her 1116 Facebook friends - though some of them she hadn't seen face-to-face for about 15 years.

Miss Bugnitz said she regularly did a "friend cull" and deleted people from her profile that she didn't know.