Tuesday, September 7, 2010

5,000 Facebook friends? Couldn’t even keep up with one relationship!

Hundreds of people in real life may be difficult for an individual to recall all names even more so in managing this number of personalities. “Dunbar’s Number” by Robin Dunbar, may attest this theory. It asserts that the measurement of that part of the human brain called neocortex, being utilized for thinking and verbalization restricts a person to be able to manage social affiliations of approximately a hundred and fifty friends only, regardless of how outgoing or friendly a person may be. Dunbar was able to come up with this number after accomplishing on his own how many persons he was able to make contact with in a year excluding networking social sites in the Internet. This was followed by an application of the theory by exploring various websites such as Facebook and MySpace. His book regarding this study is on release this year. Based on his findings, the Facebook phenomenon has barely had an effect on the volume of social alliances. As Dunbar is quoted, he said that "the interesting thing is that you can have one thousand five hundred friends but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around one hundred fifty people that we observe in the real world…" In my observation, people evidently like the status of having hundreds or even thousands of friends but the truth is that they are not likely to be more than any other person’s. Apparently, when it comes to gender, there is a huge dissimilarity. The females are much better at sustaining relations merely by having chitchat with one another, while the males necessitate physical activities to bond together.

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