Study suggests Facebook users are hesitant to unfriend digital jerks if they're 'socially popular' offline .

If you have a Facebook account, chances are you've also experienced the regret of accepting a friend request from someone who fills your newsfeed with obnoxious, inflammatory or straight up offensive posts.

We've all been there. Heck, judging by how many people gripe about the "ignorant" and "stupid" things their contacts share each day, a lot of us still are.

But why?

The findings of a new study out of Nottingham Trent University in the U.K. suggest that Facebook users may be inclined to put up with bullying in their network for much the same reason they did so in high school — because those bullies are popular.

"The social repercussions of unfriending someone reach far beyond the boundaries of the online network," said Nottingham's Sarah Buglass, while discussing the study at a British Psychological Society conference this week.

"People don't want to risk causing offline tension with their friends, family members or colleagues by disconnecting them from their online lives," she continued. "Remaining online friends with troublemakers appears to be a social necessity for some."

To reach this conclusion, Buglass and her research team analyzed a total of 5,113 individual online relationships from the perspective of 52 people ranging in age from 13 to 45.

The participants were presented with 100 randomly selected contacts from their own Facebook "friends" list and asked to rate them on such things as relational closeness, online disagreements they've had with that contact, and online disagreements they've witnessed between the contact and others.