But the conundrum is, I’ve also loved
it. Without Facebook, I might never have
known about friends’ fascinating accomplishments (Plays! Novels! Ironman
triathlons!) and moves to other continents (all seven of them, although the
Antarctica folks do also spend time in less penguin-y places). I might have missed hundreds of
thought-provoking conversations and hundreds more genuine laugh-out-loud
snort-fests. I might never have reconnected with a couple of individuals so
remarkable that they willingly tolerate my Scrabble habits. I
might have drifted irrevocably away from dozens of long-ago friends– and as a
result, I might never have enjoyed some real-world paths-crossing fun at a
coffee shop, a museum, a whale watch, a beach, or the ruins of Barnard Castle
on a sunny summer day in Yorkshire, England.
I’ve long since reconciled myself to the
fact that I’m probably not going to quit Facebook. I thought I’d also decided not bother to try
to parse all the things about it that bug the hell out of me. But recently I realized that there might be some
math involved. Math! That, of course, made the question
irresistible.
Everyone seems to agree that a Facebook
“friend” is not the same as a real friend.
But what does that distinction really mean, and why does it matter? How many friends do we want or need? What do we really want from our friends? When does Facebook supply that, where does it
fall short, and when does it actually undermine us?
Intrigued by these questions, I delved into
the research literature. (Of course I did).
I read about two different set of
numbers: one quantifying the number and closeness of friendships, and one quantifying
the amount of time that friendships require to develop. I found this fascinating. Bear with me.
Dunbar’s number was proposed in the 1990s
(by someone named Robin Dunbar, naturally) as the upper limit to the number of
people a human can really know, and thus the upper limit on “real” friendships. The number was derived based solely on the
size of the human neocortex, as compared to that of other social monkeys and
apes. But the idea caught hold when it
became apparent that many social groupings – Roman legions! Hunter-gatherer bands! -- do fall remarkably
close to this number.
Dunbar later expanded his theory to suggest
a series of layers or concentric circles.
Those 150 friends are part of a larger circle of 500 acquaintances, and
beyond that an even larger circle of vague acquaintances. Moving inward, 50 of the 150 are your core of
good friends. Of those, fifteen or so
are really close friends, or “best friends”.
At the very center, five of the fifteen are the most important people in
your life – often the family members you live with.
These numbers aren’t exact, of course. Some people flat-out don’t want this many
connections. Friends drift in and out of the loose outer layers. Researchers have quibbled over the sizes of
the circles. But a remarkable body of
research upholds the general idea of their existence – as well as their
importance, in terms of health and happiness, and the relative amount of time
that people prefer to spend nurturing the bonds within each layer. According to
Dunbar, most people assign about 40 percent of their available
social-interaction time to their inner circle of five, 20 percent to the next
ten people, and the remaining 40 percent to everyone else.
How much time per person does this actually
translate to?
I did a few quick calculations. (Of course I did.) The answer depends on what
fraction of your waking hours you spend in the company of other humans in at
least a semi-voluntary sort of way. (Work doesn’t count, but washing the dishes
together does.) If we assume a very
rough estimate of about one third, and apply Dunbar’s percentages (assuming all
layers are “full”), the per-person totals come out to three hours per person
per week in the innermost layer, just under an hour per person for the next ten
people, and six minutes per person for everyone else, assuming you don’t
“waste” time on any mere acquaintances.
Of course, these numbers look a lot higher
when you spend time with more than one person at once. If those inner five are your family, you have
15 hours per week to spend with them en masse.
If you can fit ten friends in your living room, you and your gang could
spend almost eight hours every week watching a trilogy or having a D&D
marathon. Still, there’s not a lot of
time left for the 150 – or for making new friends.
This gets us to more recent research by
someone named Jeff Hall. Dr. Hall wanted
to know just how much time people need to spend hanging out together in order
to start thinking of each other as friends, close friends, or best friends. He came up with numbers (numbers!) averaging
out to 50 hours, 90 hours, and 200 hours, respectively. Interestingly, Hall confirmed that the joint
activity barely mattered, but that the time only “counted” if it was
intentional.
Hall didn’t investigate romantic
relationships or familial ones, and he didn’t directly equate his definitions
of friendship levels to Dunbar’s layers. Nor did he quantify over how long a
period this friend-making investment can occur -- but the friendship-formations
he examined all took place within the space of six months or less, suggesting
that the basic level “friends” were averaging at least two hours per week
together, and the “best friends” more than eight hours per week – a high bar
indeed.
And that is where we get back to Facebook. Facebook
is time-efficient – much more so than reading my wordy blog posts -- and that efficiency
is immensely appealing, in the face of the daunting standards set by Hall’s
numbers. But for all its convenience and
appeal, Facebook is really bad at Dunbar layers.
Oh, it tries. That algorithm that controls how much you see
from people? Yeah, that makes
sense. If you “like” every single one of
your mom’s posts, even if she’s just posting photos of the house plants, then
you’ll continue to see them all – because she’s your MOM. If you ignore that one friend who feels he has
to announce every cup of coffee, then those posts will diminish from your
feed. Cool.
But the algorithm isn’t imperfect. It gets it wrong. I think this is in part because there are too
many variables at play: closeness, frequency of posting, frequency of response,
total number of posts you want to see, and type of posts you want to see. Some people use Facebook as a place to repost
and link tons of impersonal stuff – politics, science, humor, sports. I think of it more as a place to offer up my
own happenings, or my obviously-oh-so-cogent-and-witty personal take on current
events. Some people care about my
dogs/kids/hiking trips more than others do, and the friendship-math gets funky.
I have Facebook “friends” who definitely aren’t
in my circle of 150. I also have a
“friend” who is the man I’m married to -- and friends in every layer in
between. Some of these people don’t post
at all. Some post a couple of times a
year, some once a month, some eight times a day. And about half the real-world people I care
about, at every level, are not members of Facebook at all. All this is utterly unrelated to how
interested I am in the person, of course.
Outer-circle intrusion from people who are,
presumably, gearing their participation toward their nearest and dearest can be
solved by unfollowing, if necessary. Inner-circle exclusion can be dealt with by
closing Facebook for one hot moment and texting, emailing, or standing on a
mountaintop and waving semaphore flags. Then
there’s the problem of mid-circle exclusion: when a bunch of your friends post
a group photo of the gang of them having a Really Great Time at the party you
weren’t invited to. I guess I can deal
with this by reminding myself to be a big girl.
What took me longer to pinpoint as a source of emotional Facebook discomfort
is a slightly more subtle problem: inner-circle alienation. More about that in a moment.
Facebook, to me, is an absolutely fabulous
way to maintain ties with your 150. You
care about these people. You want to
know what’s up with them. You want to
cheer for their victories, buy a copy of the book they wrote, cogitate about
their political opinions, and laugh when their kid does something genuinely
hilarious. If disaster strikes one of
them, you want to help out – even though you can’t really help them on the
regular. Recently, when I snapped one of
my Achilles tendons and ended up on crutches for seven weeks, many friends with
whom I usually only exchange a smile or a hello came through for me with acts
of kindness, heartfelt words of support, and nifty second-hand orthopedic
devices. In short, these people are
pretty awesome. They’re important. They
are real friends, but they are nonetheless friends of convenience, and that’s
okay.
Even the fifty, the “good friends”, are,
ultimately, friends of convenience, too – and sometimes that hurts. You WANT to make plans. You even say so: “We should hang out!” Then you don’t. Because you’re a grownup, and you’re busy,
and you need to call the plumber and the babysitter and the vet and who the
hell knows what. It’s just life – and
math.
But no matter how important the outer
circles are, it’s the inner circles – the fifteen and the five – who really,
really matter. You don’t need that many
of them, of course, but you do need SOME. These are the people who love you, in
the active-verb heels-dug-in sense of the word.
These are the people who are, at least ideally, a permanent and
relatively consistent part of your life.
They’re woven into your fabric. They’re
part of your identity. They know you for
who you really are, and (miraculously!) still like you.
Mind-blowingly, it turns out that these
people are also literally keeping you alive.
An extremely long-term studies of human lives (the Harvard Study of
Adult Development) reached the startling conclusion that the single-most
important determinant of whether someone is alive, healthy, and happy at age 80
has nothing to do with weight, exercise, or even cigarette smoking. It is whether they say “yes” or “no” to the
question of whether there is someone to whom they could pour out their woes at
three o’clock in the morning.
Getting back to my point about inner-circle
alienation, Facebook is useless with these close-to-the-heart folks – and sometimes
downright painful. It’s obvious why, if
you think of hypothetical extremes: your parents are divorcing and your best
friend is marrying your twin brother, and you find out… on Facebook. Um, nope.
I realized that I gear my own Facebook
posts toward the 50 and the 150, in terms of both content and frequency. I tend to post once or twice a week, and I
tend to focus on what feels particularly important, entertaining, and personal
– but not TOO personal.
I’m not trying to claim that I do Facebook
“right”. In fact, several people have
strongly suggested that I do it wrong, in various ways. I don’t often use it as a platform for my
expertise in climate change science, and am therefore missing an opportunity to
educate the world. I don’t post enough
that is thought-provokingly controversial; I’m too bland. I’m too positive, which sets others up to
feel like failures if their lives don’t feel that upbeat. I’m too boastful, with my posts about
achievements and accolades. All of these critiques hit home. Blandness, political apathy, and boastfulness
are… not my goals. So maybe I need to
adjust my posting. But even if I do so,
I’m still going to aim my posts toward the “middle” layers of friendship.
Ultimately, I’ll accept that Facebook is,
like so much in life, what you make of it.
Face to face interactions are always going to be the best, but I have
friends scattered around the world. Real
conversations are always going to be more personal that shouting to the masses,
but we all have limited time. The math
is real, and the numbers add up.
So… Facebook it is. But know, my friends, that in my heart I’d
rather being exploring the ruins of a castle with you.
