Dunbar's Prison
Jimmy Kimmel has a point.
The talk show host declared a week from today, November 17th, as National Unfriend Day. Those of us with Facebook accounts are supposed to "weed out" those people we're connected to on Facebook who aren't really our close friends.
Anthropologist Robin Dunbar made a simple observation: we can only have so many meaningful friendships. The number hasn't been precisely nailed down, but's commonly cited as 150. Any more people than that and our brains start struggling to keep track. As smaller companies grow larger, like Microsoft in its early days, once the number of employees surpasses 150, the group splits in two.
This maximum number of meaningful relationships is known as Dunbar's Number. It's the upper cognitive bound on our social life; it's wired into our brains, so it's not something we can escape.
Dunbar is currently working to see if this conclusion holds true on the Internet; the jury is still technically out, but he's pretty sure that it will. This means that those friends of yours that have 600, 700, or over 1000 friends don't necessarily have more friends than you. Popularity has a cap...at least, as far as meaningful relationships go.
Me, I'm not going to unfriend anybody; I like my list of friends just fine. But I won't take it personally if you suddenly vanish from my friend list. Sometimes our brains just can't keep up.
The talk show host declared a week from today, November 17th, as National Unfriend Day. Those of us with Facebook accounts are supposed to "weed out" those people we're connected to on Facebook who aren't really our close friends.
Anthropologist Robin Dunbar made a simple observation: we can only have so many meaningful friendships. The number hasn't been precisely nailed down, but's commonly cited as 150. Any more people than that and our brains start struggling to keep track. As smaller companies grow larger, like Microsoft in its early days, once the number of employees surpasses 150, the group splits in two.
This maximum number of meaningful relationships is known as Dunbar's Number. It's the upper cognitive bound on our social life; it's wired into our brains, so it's not something we can escape.
Dunbar is currently working to see if this conclusion holds true on the Internet; the jury is still technically out, but he's pretty sure that it will. This means that those friends of yours that have 600, 700, or over 1000 friends don't necessarily have more friends than you. Popularity has a cap...at least, as far as meaningful relationships go.
Me, I'm not going to unfriend anybody; I like my list of friends just fine. But I won't take it personally if you suddenly vanish from my friend list. Sometimes our brains just can't keep up.