Zeng Ruijia

    Does Facebook or Weibo fulfil their promise that we can enlarge our social world and make new friends all around the world? You can find out what your friends had for breakfast from your Weibo, but can you really get to know them better? Is it really worth adding as many people to our social circle as possible? How important is the quality of our social relationships in our lives?

    Yesterday, I attended a seminar presented by Professor Robin Dunbar from the University of Oxford who specializes in evolutionary psychology. I was attracted by the topic of the seminar: “Why Facebook Won’t Get You Any More Friends.”

    Dunbar questioned Facebook’s initial goal of expanding our social circles as much as possible. He argued that it was unrealizable because of natural constraints on the number of individuals with whom any one can maintain stable relationships.

    According to Dunbar, we can only ever have 150 friends at most. He took a British company, The Domesday Book Limited, as a positive example. Every building of this company has only two floors, each of which is comprised of around 130 to 150 employees. As the company has expanded, its CEO chose to build another block of buildings instead of getting extra floors added. The reason is that when the unit is small and compact, every employee is more loyal to one another, and they will feel bonded and will have a high sense of belonging.

    At the same time, it also means that employees have to distance themselves from their friends back home because the company has already become a densely interconnected community like a real family.

    Social networks, in contrast, are not an interwoven community because we have clumps of friends scattered around the world who don’t know one another really well.

    Since social relationships are time-costly, especially for girls, how do you maintain a meaningful relationship within a social network? In spite of Dunbar’s suggestion on the number of friends, knowing the kind of friends we want in advance can help us quickly tell if a person we add or follow online could be a great fit for us.

    Thus, before we start investing more time in making friends online, try to figure out what kind of qualities, character traits, or interests that you hope your friends will possess.

    The advantage is that you can guarantee the quality of your social network. You will feel free to ask those friends within the number of 150 for help while people outside the range will probably help you after thinking it over.

    As for the significance of having positive and meaningful relationships, Dunbar did further research on what kind of treatment methods are best in the 12 months following a heart attack. The most effective one is the quality of your social networks, followed by giving up smoking, drinking alcohol and drug treatment.

    Meaningful social relationships can lower stress levels, reduce blood pressure, and generally make life longer, happier and healthier.

    Besides, based on the research, it shows that social network software like Wechat and Skype that can provide the face-to-face interaction can lead to us laughing more and feeling happier.

    All in all, despite the many benefits of social network software, we need to be aware of how it works in our everyday social life and how to use it properly.

    Only in this way can we create a sense of community online and maintain stable relationships with others.