With social networking sites, how “important” you are is generally determined by how many friends or followers you have. And it’s these numbers that the press not only loves (“Lady Gaga the first to reach 10 million followers!”) but more than a few people tend to obsess about. Thing is, no matter how many friends or followers you have, your brain can only maintain relationships with 150 people. It’s been this way since the dawn of time. And in a new study of this phenomenon, it’s been re-proven for social networking too.
It all started out in the 90’s with research from British anthropologist Robin Dunbar and what became known as Dunbar’s Number. In a nutshell, he wanted to see how many people someone could maintain stable relationships with. His study started with primates, led to humans and then led to his number; 150. The average person can maintain relationships with around 150 people.
But that was the 90’s. Now social networking, Twitter and Facebook are all the rage…where you can connect with thousands of people, all over the world, instantly.
So what about that 150 number? Has it changed? To find out, Bruno Goncalves decided to further explore Dunbar’s Number. Over 4 years, he studied the network of links created by three million Twitter users. What he found was that a person’s network grows very quickly. It then reaches a saturation point, where communication between weaker relationships fades away and communication between stronger relationships stays in place. In other words, once the saturation point is reached, you blow off the people you don’t really know and communicate only with those you do.
And what is this saturation point? About 150 people. Turns out that no matter what technology does, the human brain tops out at 150 people when it comes to maintaining relationships. So with social networking sites, we can only have about 150 real friends…and all the rest are just for show.
You can see the PDF file of the study here.