People who are members of online social networks are not so much “networking” as they are “broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle.” Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever.
Couple things i gotta say:
- This quote is right on, the advent of technology allows us to have closer relationships with those who had previously just sat on the periphery of our lives. This new intimacy isn’t usually incredible closeness, but rather allows us to see what people have been up to, what they are valuing lately, and how they are doing. This isn’t to be discounted though.
- As I understand it, Dunbar’s Number actually measures the size of a group we can understand mentally, not the amount of friends we can have. We can understand the interconnected workings of about 150 people (who they are, how they relate to us, how they relate to other people within the group). Increasingly we tend to know more people in a small group or 1-on-1 manner, so it’s likely our number of maxium relationships has grown.
- Although, there probably is a maximum cap for close friends and if we hit that cap and want to generate a new deep relationship, we probably do have to start to simplify an already existing deep relationship.
- [redacted]
A recent piece in the Economist.
More on Dunbar’s number that describes the upper limit of one’s intimate social group. I wonder, then, what happens if you max out your Dunbar number but are constantly meeting new people? Is every marginal addition (a new friend) a marginal loss as well (replaces an old friend)? Do we lose good friends by making new ones? Pessimistic, but, probably.
(via erin)
3 years ago
