First published at 06:17 UTC on April 20th, 2019.
Social media makes it seem as though you can keep in touch with every person in your life. Family, friends, neighbors, kids from school and even the guy who cuts your grass. This number very quickly grows out of control.
Looking at history there i…
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Social media makes it seem as though you can keep in touch with every person in your life. Family, friends, neighbors, kids from school and even the guy who cuts your grass. This number very quickly grows out of control.
Looking at history there is a reason why most societies developed discrete population sizes. Whether that was the village, town, city of older periods or apartment, block, street, suburb, city of the modern world. These existed to keep the people within the boundary to a moderate size which could interact and cooperate.
Such a system of organic sizing is seen in most military forces through out history. Thus begins with a basic unit of 8 to 15 which in conjunction creates a 150 to 250 strong larger force. These than collectively make larger units.
Applying this idea to human society we can see a similar rule for socializing. Anthropologist studying that exact behavior have been able to pin down an exact range of people we can keep an eye on, care about and still retain sanity.
Under current circumstances this information can help you cull your social accounts. This will help you and mitigate events like the Cambridge Analytica scandal by curtailing access to data.
Relevant links:
Phone call study
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601369/your-brain-limits-you-to-just-five-bffs/#/set/id/601360/
NPR hosts Robert Dunbar
https://www.npr.org/2017/01/13/509358157/is-there-a-limit-to-how-many-friends-we-can-have
The New Yorker explains Dunbar's number
https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/social-media-affect-math-dunbar-number-friendships
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