I Used Dunbar's Number to Reduce Contacts on Social Media

Here's what I learned

Artistic representation of 5 loved ones, 15 good friends, 50 friends, 150 meaningful contacts, 500 acquaintances and 1500 people I can recognize.

Last November as an experiment I deleted over 400 people from my connections on Facebook. It was an alternative to the “I’m quitting Facebook” message that people send out, and I set my goal at reducing down to about 150 connections based on the theory that none of us can really maintain more than about 150 meaningful contacts. I wound up with 214 connections, which was the result of there being a number of people from my past that I may not talk to regularly but still feel an attachment to.

A few months later, I’m happy to report that most of my former feelings of anger, frustration, and self-censoring have gone away and I feel more comfortable using the platform. 

My Observed Benefits

Here are some of the benefits:

• The algorithm is showing me content from people I feel close to; I sacrificed quantity of people in my feed for what I feel is higher quality. 

• I am interacting more on the platform with comments. 

• I have a greater sense of community.

• Likes don’t matter very much, a side-effect that I’m not sure how I can explain at the present time but it’s a nice feeling. 

• I try to limit the time I spend on the platform, and it’s easier to limit my time as I feel like I have my updates without having to check multiple times a day.

This is the same effect as a break-out room in zoom. You can address the room, and get feedback, but until you have a smaller group the interactions will be very different.