Does “social butterfly” have negative connotation?

I have only heard it used with a positive connotation

Its not usually negative but can be used sarcastically.

I've never heard it used negatively. Always saw it as neutral. Just describes that the person in question thrives in social situations.

I’ve only ever heard it positively

I'd say generally neutral or positive, but it can be used negatively. For example, "she needs to stop being such a social butterfly and pay attention in class."

No not really. A social butterfly is usually an extrovert that easily makes friends and enjoys talking with people. The only time someone may use it negatively is jf they're being sarcastic or if they personally don't enjoy those things and are judgy about it. But there is no negative connotation to social butterfly.

It's neutral. It doesn't mean someone can't maintain relationships, it just means that this is one of their ways of interacting when out socially.

In Australia, I've never heard it as a negative. It just means the person is outgoing and likes to hang out with lots of people.

I only have heard it with positive connotations

Yes slightly negative, and applied almost exclusively to women, with possibly an association with “dumb blonde” character, implies that the person prioritizes superficial socializing over knowledge and conversations with substance.

It's funny--it is not a "neutral" term, but it can be positive, or negative, depending on the context. Also, it's only light-hearted, so it may seem demeaning because it lends itself to sarcasm so easily.

If someone uses it to describe themselves they're probably just a narcissist (I mean that in the normal sense, not the reddit sense), but if someone says it about someone else they usually don't mean anything negative

Not really, although I've heard it used sarcastically.

Northeastern US here. I've often heard it used negatively, to imply that someone has no depth, but only socializes for status.

Is your friend kinda antisocial?

It's a pretty positive term for an extroverted person. Though a social butterfly may have "loose lips" or have "no filter" and reveal secrets that were meant to be secret. Then they become gossip mongers.

Not negative unless you are weird and despise people who are super-friendly and social. ETA: per Cambridge dictionary it does often have a negative connotation.

Cambridge dictionary agrees that it often means the person doesn’t deepen/strengthen their relationships. That does leave it open to being neutral or positive. I never looked at it like that (being superficial). “a person who likes to attend parties and other social events, often not having serious relationships with other people” https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/social-butterfly

It doesn't convey disapproval on its own. But, I suppose if speaker disapproved of being social, they could say it with malice.

I'm very surprised at all these answers. I know it with very negative connotations—a person who flits around from friend group to friend group without being particularly loyal to anyone. Here's a description from 1917, hardly favorable: >I will take the extreme case of the social butterfly. \[…\] She is universally despised and condemned, and almost universally envied—one of the strangest among the many strange facts of natural history. She lives with a single purpose—to be forever in the movement, not any particular movement, but *the* movement, which is a grand, combined tendency comprising all lesser tendencies. For the social butterfly, the constituents of the movement are chiefly men, theaters, restaurants, dances, noise, and hurry. \[…\] You observe how sarcastic I am about the social butterfly. It is necessary to be so. The social butterfly never has, since the earliest times, been mentioned in print without sarcasm or pity, and she never will be. Or from 1927: >By sociability \[…\] do we mean a person who is most susceptible to crowd influence, as the social butterfly, or will we say that the sociable individual has many friends or not necessarily many but a few very close friends, or lastly how shall we classify the person who is sociable with his superiors or even possibly with his equals but not with his inferiors? Or from 1999: >Robinson \[…\] was clearly bent on proving herself an intellectual equal and disavowing her image as a frivolous social butterfly. Or from 2000: >Though you are the proverbial "social butterfly" you are not as shallow and witless as the title might imply. I didn't cherry-pick these. These are just what showed up on Google Books when I searched the term (the latter two when I narrowed the results to more modern examples). I chose the first ones I could find that provided any context.

More negative than positive, but more dismissive/belittling than damning. In fact, perhaps the best way to describe its valence is "distancing". It's a phrase used to remark upon someone's behaviour as not how we would behave. The very act of being a social butterfly prevents other people from getting close and having a genuine relationship. There is no loyalty, no dependability, no true intimacy. The social butterfly, when noticed as such, can evoke both suspicion and pity: what is wrong/broken with this person that they can't form steady social relationships? This phrase predates the acceptance of ADHD as a medical concept, and other related conditions/phenomena that could underlie such behaviour. But it strongly hints at neurodivergence of some sort. We now have other lenses and terminology at our disposal, so we could suggest that someone is masking some degree of autism, avoiding attachment due to PTSD, or is servicing some form of addiction, etc.

It’s also quite a feminine term - I think you would be unlikely to call a man a social butterfly. It feels like one of those terms which has historically used to belittle women and imply their interests are frivolous and unserious.

I’m really interested by the people who know this as a negative term. I wonder whether it’s regional? In NZ, I’ve only ever heard it used positively to mean someone who is really gregarious and good at (and enjoys) socialising, e.g., someone at a party who can flit around the room and seamlessly join in with every conversation and group they encounter

I believe this is a term that was originally meant negatively (early 20th C) but has become more positive over time. (I am British, FWIW). I think in its earlier negative form it was essentially implying someone who was shallow and possibly even promiscuous, lacking 'purpose'. In the 1920s the notion of the rich youth as captured in the phrase Bright Young Things (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright\_young\_things) being rudderless and thus wasters, was an understood thing, and really that was an era of dismissal of people lacking a drive to do things. Whereas these days it's something we tend to respect: a person who is great at getting along with people, moving amongst groups, Influencers on social media, etc. I'd imagine much older cohorts would still use it negatively.

I think it depends on context. Like it's a positive term but if you say "she was too much of a social butterfly to have time to study" then it's saying something bad.

The overall connotation is positive (the person described is fun to be around and has alot of friends) but it can be used sarcastically (the person described is overly social to the point of being annoying or spends too much time socializing).