Facebook has set up a toxic atmosphere of co-dependence and narcissism. It has taught us, not to become reliant on Facebook, but to become reliant on others.
It's an environment where users are becoming excessively, and at times awkwardly, open about their lives with everyone on the internet at the risk of jeopardizing their own social well-being for individuals they may not even know.
Facebook has entered the limelight of the Internet and, while its appeal is beginning to curb, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.
The appeal of Facebook is understandable. It's a great way to keep up with friends, but also strangers.
While having Facebook makes it easier to connect with anyone and everyone, it is actually slowly deteriorating how and who we communicate with. Individuals with over 500 friends, or even a thousand, are not uncommon on Facebook.
It's fascinating how one person can keep track of over 1,000 people. Working under the premise: friendship requires a relationship, users with over a thousand friends must surely remember individual things about each person and, at the very least, their names.
This would seem to be a tall task for any one person to handle; and as it turns out, most people cannot.
In 2011, NPR's Rachel Martin interviewed Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at the University of Oxford, to gain insight on his findings regarding human networking.
As it turns out, the average person can only keep track of around 150 people.
This is called Dunbar's Number.
With this information in mind, it would be rather absurd to think that one person could keep track of over 1,000 people.
Thanks to Dunbar's Number, it is safe to assume that many of these people are complete strangers.
Now, it's not far-fetched to assume many of these users may actually know most of the people they are Facebook friends with, however it is questionable they might actually be close.
Perhaps they may only be acquaintances, or someone they've only met once.
It's also not uncommon to see people become Facebook friends with strangers.
Facebook is an environment that promotes users creating ambiguous connections with people, thus skewing the line between users' actual friends and complete strangers.
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