Blog post #3


In class we watched a video from Robin Dunbar where he discussed the Dunbar Number. In summary, the Dunbar number is the number of people that you can maintain a stable relationship with. Dunbar explained that when social media and sites like Facebook became more prominent that people believed we would essentially be able to have more friends.

 On paper, this would seem true as with social media we have seen friends and follower numbers skyrocket and are well above the Dunbar number of 150. If Dunbar is correct, that 150 is the maximum number of stable relationships we can have it made me wonder why Facebook and follower counts often exceed this number into the hundreds and thousands. Although Dunbar does describe that we can have acquaintances or people we simply recognize over the number of 150 he is firm that 150 is the max number of ‘friends’ one can have. Since specifically Facebook exclusively runs on friends and not followers shouldn’t everyone have around 150 friends according to Dunbar? It makes me wonder if Facebook should change it’s friending system to have different types of friends such as acquaintances and have different privacy settings for these group?  Dunbar would argue you don’t have a stable relationship with that group so maybe you don’t want them seeing the same things as your true ‘friends’ but you don’t want to delete them all together. 

The Dunbar number is an interesting theory that make you question the popularity contest that is social media and the relationships we have with our followers and friends.

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 21, 2018 at 1:45 PM

    Hi,

    After reading your entry I have come to side with the argument of Dunbar and justify that it is possible to having 150 different relationship. However, speaking to your point about Facebook and the amount of friends one has listed, I do not believe Facebook follows the same argument as Dunbar. Facebook is seen as a way to stay connected with people you have crossed paths with, as well as share one's common interests. Though the people we have friended on Facebook we have built connections with does not mean that they can be qualified as having a relationship with. Speaking to Dunbar's point I believe that we are capable of having 150 active-meaningful relationships, yet Facebook allows us to have as many as we inquire. Therefore, though all our friends on Facebook aren't our "true friends" we still do share and allow then to see what we are interested in.

    In contraction to this, Facebook as recently started tagging active members on your Facebook and people that you frequently keep in contact with, are placing them directly in your news feeds so that you wont miss what your 'true friend' is doing.

    ReplyDelete

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