Offline research has given rise to what’s called the “Social Brain Hypothesis”. This says that our brain’s ability to process multiple relationships creates a natural group size for humans of 100-200 people. This size is also constrained (限制) by the time required to maintain relationships — we only have so much time to devote to meeting or talking to people.
It has been suggested that social media might overcome the time constraints because posts and pictures allow us to talk to many more people at the same time even if the interaction is not direct. So psychologist Professor Robin Dunbar carried out two surveys of more than 3,300 people to see whether using the Internet really means we can have more friends.
What he found was that even among regular social media users, the average number of friends they had on Facebook was 155 in the first survey and 183 in the second, right in the bracket (范围) predicted by the “Social Brain Hypothesis”.
The first survey group, made up of regular social media users, considered only 28% of their Facebook friends to be “genuine” friends. When asked specifically how many people they would turn to for support in a crisis and how many they would turn to for sympathy, on average those groups were just 4 and 14 friends respectively, matching the offline findings of the “Social Brain Hypothesis”.
While a few people did have much larger groups of online “ friends ” on Facebook, they had similar sized support and sympathy groups to others. This suggests that when social media seem to allow someone to have more friends, it is because looser acquaintances are being included in the “friend” category, and partly because social media sites tend not to differentiate between close and more distant relationships — even though we clearly distinguish between friends and acquaintances in the offline world.
Professor Robin Dunbar explained, “social media certainly help to slow down the natural rate of decline in relationship quality that would set in once we cannot readily meet friends face to face. But no amount of social media will prevent a friend from eventually becoming just another acquaintance if you don’t meet face to face from time to time. There is something vital for face-to-face interaction that is crucial for maintaining friendships. Seeing the white of their eyes from time to time seems to be crucial to the way we maintain friendships.”
【小题1】Why did Professor Robin Dunbar carried out two surveys?| A．To discover if social media use can expand one’s social circle. |
| B．To prove social media offer a way to overcome the time constraints. |
| C．To explore how offline interactions allow one to have more friends. |
| D．To show if social media provides more communication opportunities. |
| A．They can not serve as evidence. | B．They are well above expectations. |
| C．They have led to more offline research. | D．They confirm the “Social Brain Hypothesis”. |
| A．Because they got great support and sympathy from their online social circle. |
| B．Because they were better at turning acquaintances into friends. |
| C．Because they could distinguish their friends and acquaintances clearly online. |
| D．Because they viewed people in their acquaintance circle as friends. |
| A．Social media can not replace face-to-face contact. |
| B．Social media affect our face-to-face socialization skills. |
| C．Social media fail to improve the quality of our relationships. |
| D．Social media have negative effects on face-to-face interaction. |
