Blog Post #4 - McLeod

 A concept that really stuck out to me was Dunbar's theory of the magic number. He considered the size of human social networks is around 150 individuals. This is called Dunbar's number. The people in this group are broken down into 4 essential groups. There are close friends, good friends, friends and acquaintances. He states that 5 people are your close friends, 15 are good friends, 50 friends and the rest are acquaintances. If we bring Dunbar's theory into the realm of social media, we can see that many of the people we are "friends" with may not be as close as we believe. 

One of the ways we as social media users can see that we often have many more followers or friends than people who actually like or interact with our posts. The example I think of is Facebook. The majority of the posts on Facebook are liked by a closer, more intimate group of friends. If it is not friends, then it is a family member. Family members may feel obligated to like your photos as they are related. This brings the total of friends admiring your posts to an even smaller amount. This shows the ideal 150 number that Dunbar discusses. Of course, you can tell what categories these 150 fall into on your own.

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