Blog Post #4- Zoe McLaven

    For my final blog post, I focused on The Dunbar Theory of the Social Brain. I was unfamiliar with his theory before this class; however, after learning about it, I thought it was vital to the social world we all live in today. This theory by Dunbar states that the maximum number of humans to manage a stable network is 150. This number is broken into several categories; friends, good friends and close friends. With close friends, Dunbar states that people usually have around five friends. People can also have a group of approximately 50 people classified as friends, and finally, good friends, 15 friends plus the five close friends. The Dunbar number is broken down into these categories to encompass the people within each circle of friends. Thus, generating an understanding of closeness within these relationships and the maximum number of people who can maintain good friendships. This theory can be further proved and explained by people's friendships on the social media app Instagram. Instagram is a vast app that allows users to request their friends, good friends and acquaintances to which they can follow and see the posts and stories they decide to share. However people on this app can also follow people that are not classified within the inner circle to which goes against this theory. As users create posts on their accounts, people will comment and like the post. People that interact with their following posts on this app are not always their close friends or good friends but still decide to leave a friendly message on their posts. This furthers Dunbar's theory that when groups at such large evoke emotions and interactions on posts that they are not directly tied to creates this unmeaningful relationship. To generate highly personalized connections, face-to-face interaction is vital for the maximum number of 150 stable networks. Sadly Instagram takes away this crucial performance to building connections, but instead, people continue to develop online relationships of people they are not directly tied to on app rather than off the app.


Comments

  1. Vanessa BruzzeseDecember 5, 2022 at 7:44 AM

    Great post!
    I tend to find Dunbar's theory really interesting, specifically focussing on Dunbar's number. I say this because, it is fascinating to look at the ways in which this number was applied in the time that it was created and intended for. I also think it's interesting to look at how we can use Dunbar's number in the day and age of social media. I'm under the impression that we can use the framework of Dunbar's number in order to support as to how we look at the number of people we are able to have in our lives and associate with today.

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