ST. PAUL, Minn. - The University of St. Thomas held a roundtable Thursday evening called 'Diversity roundtable: What is friendship gap?'
The friendship gap is based on a racial analysis of social networks. The idea of the friendship gap was developed by a St. Paul-based social enterprise company, Synapse Minnesota LLC.
A couple of studies have been done, one by the Public Religion Research Institute said in a deep dive of social media analytics it found the average white person is friends with one black person and that the average black person is friends with eight white people.
Pew Research backs that up with data that show 81 percent of white adults reporting that all or most of their close friends are white. While black adults report that 70 percent of their close friends are black.
The numbers suggest what is now being called a 'friendship gap', and BTN's Jana Shortal spoke to three students at the University of St. Thomas to see what they make of it.