DeGroot et al. (2011) conducted an extensive study on young people’s feelings
towards socially connecting online and self‐disclosure as predictors of communication on
facebook as well as the level of intimacy in relationships. Their study included nine
hypotheses, two of which are relevant to this examination of findings on the two motive
hypotheses. The researchers ask if online social connection (OSC) has a positive relationship with the frequency of face‐to‐face communication with facebook friends and if
communicating on facebook is positively correlated with personal interactions with
facebook friends. There were 325 facebook users who participated in this study. They were
surveyed on their attitude towards online communication and then asked questions about
a randomly selected facebook friend. These questions included where the friend lived,
amount of facebook communication with this friend, non‐Internet communication with this
friend, and how close they were to this friend. After analysis, the results showed that OSC
has a positive relationship with communication via facebook when online selfdisclosure is
low. They also found that personal interaction with a friend made it very probable for
facebook communication to occur. Evidence for the rich get richer hypothesis is shown in
this study.