Slashdot Mirror
Human Brain Places Limit On Twitter Friends
Hugh Pickens writes "Back in early '90s, British anthropologist Robin Dunbar began studying human social groups, measuring the number of people an individual can maintain regular contact with, and came up with 150 — a number that appears to be constant throughout human history — from the size of neolithic villages to military units to 20th century contact books. But in the last decade, social networking technology has had a profound influence on the way people connect, vastly increasing the ease with which we can communicate with and follow others, so it's not uncommon for tweeters to follow and be followed by thousands of others. Now Bruno Goncalves has studied the network of links created by three million Twitter users over four years. After counting tweets that are mutual and regular as signifying a significant social bond, he found that when people start tweeting, their number of friends increases to a saturation point until they become overwhelmed. Beyond that saturation point, the conversations with less important contacts start to become less frequent and the tweeters begin to concentrate on the people they have the strongest links with. So what is the saturation point? The answer is between 100 and 200, just as Dunbar predicts. 'This finding suggests that even though modern social networks help us to log all the people with whom we meet and interact,' says Goncalves, 'they are unable to overcome the biological and physical constraints that limit stable social relations (PDF).'"
...how much is that in Facebook friends?
Or Libraries of Congress?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
This logic applies to a great many things.
Most humans own an average of 4 cars in a lifetime. Physical and biological constraints apply. No surplus of dealerships will change this.
Without modifying ourselves it's improbable that any technology can change the limits our biological make-up presents.
.: Max Romantschuk
People are also constrained by the amount of time that they (can reasonably) dedicate to twitter. Their definition of 'strong bonds' seems to be bonds that require time, frequently communicating with 150 people back and forth is a time consuming endeavor and the more people you communicate with, the more saturated your time will be and so the less time you will be able to dedicate to each individual.
In one IRC chatroom alone there could be 150+ regular chatters. Across a dozen of these there could be well over 1000.
It's not difficult to be in contact with hundreds of different people every day for months.
That's like 50 times more than I could ever handle.
But... the future refused to change.
By importance? Importance is very difficult to quantify for any study because it's completely subjective.
I'd say that number is even pushing it. I have approximately 175 people or so on my facebook list. It includes but is not limited to; real life friends, immediate family, extended family, co-workers, former classmates and people I've met online. Out of those 175 or so (plus co-workers I don't have on my facebook), Id say in a given week I probably interact with about 40 in any meaningful manner both in real life and online. Perhaps I'm the exception but I highly doubt it...
the monkeysphere! :)
http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html
I guess, with twitter and fb, the monkeysphere is expanding, and you cannot cope with it unless the brain is modified
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
"This fifinding suggests that even though modern social networks help us to log all the people with whom we meet and interact, they are unable to overcome the biological and physical constraints that limit stable social relations," say Goncalves and co.
How is meaningful defined? If you mean regular social contact with then it's easy to talk to 1000 people in a day.
If you are talking about talking to 1000 people in different chatrooms on a regular basis thats also easy but it would probably be on a weekly basis.
How do we determine what a meaningful conversation is? Is this conversation you and I are having meaningful? How would I judge?
You can surely remember more than 150 different screen names you've communicated with and you probably can know a bit about all of them.
What is your point? George Bush remembered the names of virtually everyone he met, again whats your point?
People can only maintain contact with ~150 due to the speed at which they can communicate which includes processing what is being said. When we all have little implants that let us write what we think as fast as we think it the number will go up a little bit and when we can use eternal memory storage we will be able to have a lot more. However, when that happens we will be able to share our thoughts and memory which will lead to the downfall of mankind when women find out what men really think about.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The Dunbar hypothesis isn't a limit on group size. It argues that an individual can maintain only some 100-200 regular social contacts. Yet if, as the article suggests, a Twitter user stabilizes at a maximum of 150-200 regularly-maintained contacts, they're using up most, if not all, of their Dunbar-space on Twitter alone. So does this mean that people with 150-200 regular Twitter contacts must lose their pre-Twitter real-world regular contacts, or that their pre-Twitter contacts must become Twitter contacts? That seems a bit much to assume without evidence.
I suppose further research will explore how the real-world-and-non-Twitter social life of the twitterati changes as they near their Dunbar limit on Twitter. Perhaps, as the article boldly suggests, "social networks [do] not change human social capabilities" (Conclusions, 7) and the Dunbar limit is indeed resistant to technological circumvention. But this article doesn't make that clear. By not examining the full social space of its subjects, the study does not actually address the possibility that Twitter has increased the number of regular contacts - of all types - that an individual can maintain.
human brains also couldn't deal with speeds over 75mph. human brains adapt, that is the game. under estimating this is total bull
Content + Container; Content = Container; Content â Container... which is the question?
You're not alone there tbh. I have around 30 facebook friends, including family members and such, and I interact with about 4 of them on a frequent basis. I simply see no value in trying to "befriend" people whom I have nothing in common, nor do I value pointless chatter that much either. There's no way I could keep up with 150 people.
for anybody!
It's not difficult to be in contact with hundreds of different people every day for months.
There's a huge difference between people inside your MonkeySphere and people inside your chat room.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Why is that so hard to believe? I got my first vehicle when I was 16, sold it two years later and got my parents old car, which was later destroyed (not-at-fault accident) and I got their next oldest car (my parents have a lot of cars). I eventually traded up for a newer car, and now own a motorcycle. Unless it doesn't include used cars, I doubt this is unusual. Most of my peers around my age are on their second or third car, and several (but not most) of us own two vehicles (car + motorcycle, or car + truck). I'm not doubting the average of four across all humans living today, though. I just think the average for the United States is much much higher.
Like with an RSS feed, twitter and facebook can be full with single-sided interaction. Does that count as "friendship"? Or "social interaction"?
Some even claim twitter and facebook are replacing RSS, since the idea is the same; you subscribe to updates of something (or someone) you find interesting. The option to interact is there, but doesn't have to be used.
It seems that the extroverts definition of friend succeeded for web 2.0
that's just plain wrong, which I verified with Google in 30 seconds. Furthermore it doesn't have anything to do with human capabilities or wants as is the point here. It has everything to do with economic means and cultures. Did you know in the 60s people used to buy cars every two years on average? Mostly because the cars sucked, sure they were a few classics mixed in there, but those weren't the bulk.
So I still have place in my brain for 145 more friends. Great news.
Nobody can. There's only so many hours in a day. Even if you spend 14 hours a day -only- being social (=100% of your waking time minus the time you eat and visit the bathroom etc), then 150 friends would still only get 10 minutes a day each.
And most people do other things than just be social, you know, stuff like holding a job or studying, shopping, cooking, doing housework, showering, etc.
A more realistic (but still high!) time-available estimate is 3-4 hours on weekdays and 10 hours on weekends, which gives you 35 hours/week, or 2 minutes a day for your friends.
On Facebook, "friend" tends to mean "someone I met at some point in my life and can recognize".
I have a big problem with keeping in mind all those human interactions. This number of 150 seems too big for me. Although I have no problems with new acquaintances, it's difficult to me to keep them all in mind. Maybe it's a reason why I don't as interested in facebook, twitter and all that as all people are.
So many hours in the day, but I don't need to talk to each of my friends every day, so my time spent with friends doesn't need to fit into 10-minute increments.
I can spend a couple of hours with each of 150 friends every couple of weeks, on average, and still fit into your 14-hour social day.
But I don't average my social time across my "friends." Some friends might only consume a few minutes per month of conversational maintenance; better friends will use more time.
There's no good reason why I can't spend 5 or 10 minutes, per month, talking to my not-so-close friends, and a few hours a week with each of my good friends, and still have time for eating, showering, and work in a day. Even if I've got 150 "friends," and neglect none of them absolutely.
(On another note, I'm personally nowhere near as social as that and don't have any desire to be, but let's not let that get in the way of hypothetical conjecture...)
Kid-proof tablet..
friends to zero.
Seriously, folks, get real lives - they're vastly superior.
Dunbar postulated that the number is only reached in situations of strong environmental and economic pressure, like survival villages or military forces. Such a large social network takes a lot of effort in term of social grooming, so in most other cases it makes more sense for the individual to keep the number of social interactions down.
See the wikipedia entry for Dunbar's number.
Cracked.com is not a research website, but a website which puts forward stuff in a witty way. How did you come to the conclusion that I thought that cracked was the researcher?
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
When we say 150 connection is the limit, it means 150 connections matter.
you may have 500 facebook friends, and they all may get your status updates, and many of them may reply to you too,
But if one of them dies, or goes away from your friends list, you will not be aware unless that person is in your "monkeysphere".
Even if you are an agony aunt, and reply to 100 different people in a week, you forget about them immediately. How many will you remember actually?
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
Some time back, I worked as a retail store manager. One of the things that the company made a point of was that there were studies that indicated that on average people know 250 people well enough to impact their buying decisions. The point they made was that if somebody had a negative experience in your store, it was not just that one person whose sales you might lose as a result. Knowing how some of the other numbers they used got distorted to make whatever point they were pushing, I suspect that somewhere along the line this 150 people number got stretched to 250.
However, having looked at the group dynamics of many organizations over my life time that is the range that fits with my experience. Organizations that are designed to be social interactions for their members tend to divide between 200 and 500, either intentionally or because of internal disputes.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
It's like xkcd's comments on graphs without an axis or labels.
Lifetime... that's a lot of years! Let's say you "die young" at 50. You got your first car "late" at 20. So AC's figure of 4 cars = 7.x years per car, *each*. That's kinda long. Many people don't buy new anymore. So now we're asking about the quality of the used ones we get.
Americans are quite happy with the cultural tradition of the clunker to get you past a year. You pick it up for $500 and it somehow passes inspection.
The other part is the word "own" - families usually have His & Hers plus sometimes the kid's.
So I propose the figure of 12 cars closer to the mark "per lifetime".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
This should not come as a surprise at all. The monkey-sphere cannot be reasoned with.
I have 140 more spots I can fill!
sig not found
but most of the time why would we care what person A thinks about person B even if they tell us?
Unless it influences or has to do with how you think about them or they think about you, why would you remember it?
Because it does influence how they think about you. If Gnivad thinks Tilda is stuck-up, then siding with Tilda on an issue may make you look stuck-up to Gnivad.
The problem is not keeping up with people online, it's that you never really find the time to spend with them. I particularly noticed it when I started studying, I had my "old friends" and my "study friends" which were completely disjoint social circles. Friday and saturday night there was different things going on, I could either be here or there. Take a thing as a birthday party, most people have it on saturday and there's only 52-53 of them each year, with 200 friends there's likely to be 4 a week. Or cabin trips or any other for of social gathering. You just can't keep a real social contact with that many people.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'd wager that Dunbar's number is actually much smaller than the 150-ish number that the guesses at placing it average out to. From that link, the definition is given as this:
These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person.
No way can anyone maintain that level of relationship with 150 other people.
So how is a group of 150 people stable? Simple: it's a mesh network. You really know about half a dozen or so people closest to you, as does everyone else. A few dozen more maybe on the fringes of what you'd consider something between friends and acquaintances. The rest of them are friends of friends. Depending on what modicum of trust you afford for the people that you don't know well personally but your friends trust, the group holds together. Otherwise, it rapidly dissolves into small cliques. There's a pyramidal effect and it depends greatly on how varied your friends are. There are millions of ways to select half-a-dozen people out of a group of 150 or so. If there's enough variation, it's coherent; but if everyone in your immediate friends is friends with each other, it forms a clique. The network is saturated and it can't grow much larger.
There is another site out there that I heard about (I don't use Twitter, Facebook, or any of those social sites, unless you count slashdot, which doesn't seem very social to me) that limits you to 50. I'm sure they also have some scientific reasoning for the limitation.
It seems to me like it would make more sense to just have facebook or twitter give you the option to limit yourself to a number of your choosing. Then there would be no need for a whole other site with that limit that you now have to convince all your friends to sign up for in addition to whatever other sites for which they are already signed up.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
measuring the number of people an individual can maintain regular contact with, and came up with 150
My number is more like 2-3. Maybe that's why I'm so anti-social.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Regardless of what "a couple" means, a couple of hours ever couple of weeks, adds up to one hour a week. If you spend one hour a week with 150 friends, that is 150 hours a week, or 21 hours and 40 minutes every day.
So no, you cannot do that with a 14-hour-a-day socializing-schedule.
It helps if you lump friends together offcourse, you -could- do it if you would hang out with 2-5 friends at a time, rather than just one.
But all this is nitpicking - the basic point remains that there's not enough time to have significant one-on-one contact with hundreds of people every week. Literally the only way you can have a higher count of friends, is to spend less time on each of them.
It's obvious that there's some cut-off-point where what remains is no longer enough to maintain a relationship worthy of the label "friend".
We can argue over -precisely- where this cut-off is 50 ? 200 ? But basic math says it must be there.
Unless you consider it possible to have an actual friendship with someone while investing 30 seconds a year to the purpose, or some such nonsense. (I'm not saying you can't have a friend you ain't heard from for a year -- but I *am* saying I don't think you can have one that you've average 1 minute a year of interaction with over the time you've known him/her --- that's on the order of 1hour/lifetime, afterall.)
See? This is why the first generation of pokemon was the best!
This is your brain on Twitter.
Any questions?
Including sense of humor.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The limit probably has more to do with the practical aspect of how much time we have to interact with other people. Nothing to do with any brain limit. The Dunbar limit is based on a rather arbitrary definition of what a close friend is.
Read TFA, and it's like watching Fox News.
Correlation doesn't prove anything.
How does the size of military units (specific ones no less, it's not like all military units are the same size) have to do with maintaining stable social circles?
How does real-world social interaction (actual social capital) compare with people you don't know and never met following you on twitter?
You can always find numbers in the world which correlate. The number of galaxies in the universe is about the same as neurons in our brain. Correlation high, significance low.
Not everyone can be a "Cesar"...some are endowed with the ability to maintain frequent relationships with many, while "Senators" to a lesser degree, and so on and so forth down the food chain. Do not make a "common demininator" of digital technologies via those who grasp the same device.
Great article, http://exercisesto-reducetummy.com/articles/exercises-to-reduce-tummy-best-abs/