We all need friends. We always have. Our ancestors found obtaining the basic necessities of life was easier in a group. But can you can have too much of a good thing? It’s estimated that the maximum number of people who lived in early communities of hunter-gatherers was 150.
According to evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar, 150 is the largest number of people you can share trust and obligations with. This value is known as ‘Dunbar’s number’. It is thought to be a cognitive limit to the number of friends we can maintain, not the number of people we know. People can boast thousands of ‘friends’ on Facebook, but Dunbar would say that it is impossible to feed and nourish all these relationships.
Social networking sites such as Facebook have changed the landscape of friendship. It may be the case that the ease with which we can now remain in touch makes Dunbar’s number less relevant. There may well be limits to the number of people we can keep a quality friendship with, the type of friend we phone for advice and help. But it may be that we are able to maintain, at a lower level, additional friendships of a different quality far beyond this number.
Yet how many of this number could you count on in your hour of need? On Christmas Day, Simone Back, 42, from Brighton, announced on Facebook to her 1,082 friends: ‘Took all my pills be dead soon so bye bye everyone.’ There were 150 online responses, including taunts and bickering. No one who lived nearby tried to help her or called 999. Her body was found the next day.
According to evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar, 150 is the largest number of people you can share trust and obligations with. This value is known as ‘Dunbar’s number’. It is thought to be a cognitive limit to the number of friends we can maintain, not the number of people we know. People can boast thousands of ‘friends’ on Facebook, but Dunbar would say that it is impossible to feed and nourish all these relationships.
Social networking sites such as Facebook have changed the landscape of friendship. It may be the case that the ease with which we can now remain in touch makes Dunbar’s number less relevant. There may well be limits to the number of people we can keep a quality friendship with, the type of friend we phone for advice and help. But it may be that we are able to maintain, at a lower level, additional friendships of a different quality far beyond this number.
Yet how many of this number could you count on in your hour of need? On Christmas Day, Simone Back, 42, from Brighton, announced on Facebook to her 1,082 friends: ‘Took all my pills be dead soon so bye bye everyone.’ There were 150 online responses, including taunts and bickering. No one who lived nearby tried to help her or called 999. Her body was found the next day.
The difference in definitions of friendship often boils down to a question of needs. For some, friendship is all about affiliation – the need to have a large number of positive connections. For others, friendship is more about intimacy – the need to have a few warm, close relationships.
Research suggests that people who choose to stick with a few close confidants in youth are better adjusted by middle age than those who need to chum up with many.Social networking is a minefield for those with a strong need to affiliate.
Research suggests that people who choose to stick with a few close confidants in youth are better adjusted by middle age than those who need to chum up with many.Social networking is a minefield for those with a strong need to affiliate.
While it opens the opportunity to connect with the multitude, it also invites the possibility of rejection, where people can be ‘defriended’ by existing connections, or friendship requests can be turned down by prospective ones. People who need to affiliate are more likely to find these rejections particularly crushing. Some people find that social networking contributes to a sense of loneliness and inadequacy. An anonymous blogger wrote: ‘If I post something and no one responds, I feel sad and lonely. If I go on a friend’s page and see that they gave a rose or some other gift to some mutual friends, I wonder why I didn’t get anything. I feel like reaching out, but fear I will come across as needy or emotionally bereft.’
Degrees of comfort with using Facebook as a forum for friendship depend on your generation. In one camp are ‘digital natives’ – those born during or after the introduction of digital technology. They grew up with mobile phones, emails, blogs. When I ask digital native Ashley, 22, to describe someone who doesn’t use Facebook, she looks utterly surprised. ‘Everyone is on Facebook,’ she says, flatly. Tell a digital native you are not on Facebook and you can expect the response, ‘How do you live without Facebook?’
In the other camp are digital immigrants. They were born before the advent of digital technology, and are likely to have adopted it – to some extent, by necessity – later in life. They include the ‘avoiders’, who are suspicious of most social networking sites. They see the phenomenon as exhibitionist, voyeuristic, a threat to personal privacy.
‘It is pointless to collect friends you have lost touch with from your past,’ says Adam, 41. ‘If you aren’t good friends, it is probably for a good reason.’
Friends aren’t bound by blood or family bonds, employment contracts or legal obligations. We do things for one another because we want to. Whether writing a response to a photo tagged on Facebook, sending a birthday card by post, or making a hospital visit, the efforts we make for our friends are intentional acts of kindness. It is this voluntary nature of friendship that makes it rewarding – and precious.
Degrees of comfort with using Facebook as a forum for friendship depend on your generation. In one camp are ‘digital natives’ – those born during or after the introduction of digital technology. They grew up with mobile phones, emails, blogs. When I ask digital native Ashley, 22, to describe someone who doesn’t use Facebook, she looks utterly surprised. ‘Everyone is on Facebook,’ she says, flatly. Tell a digital native you are not on Facebook and you can expect the response, ‘How do you live without Facebook?’
In the other camp are digital immigrants. They were born before the advent of digital technology, and are likely to have adopted it – to some extent, by necessity – later in life. They include the ‘avoiders’, who are suspicious of most social networking sites. They see the phenomenon as exhibitionist, voyeuristic, a threat to personal privacy.
‘It is pointless to collect friends you have lost touch with from your past,’ says Adam, 41. ‘If you aren’t good friends, it is probably for a good reason.’
Friends aren’t bound by blood or family bonds, employment contracts or legal obligations. We do things for one another because we want to. Whether writing a response to a photo tagged on Facebook, sending a birthday card by post, or making a hospital visit, the efforts we make for our friends are intentional acts of kindness. It is this voluntary nature of friendship that makes it rewarding – and precious.
Source: Psychologies