You have too many friends—I promise you. Really. You’ve been collecting them for probably half a decade, like barnacles on the side of a slow boat, and they’re holding you back. They’re also threatening your privacy. End it. You might have heard of Dunbar’s Number, a psychological “law” that human beings can’t maintain meaningful relationships with between 100 to 230 other people. Hahaha. Plenty of us have several hundreds, if not thousands of Facebook friends. The transformation of Facebook “friendship” into something abstract and laughable is well-trodden by now, and we’ve sort of started to just take it as a modern shrug. That’s just the way things are now—the joy of rediscovering people from high school has been replaced with the endless chore of clicking to hide all those people from high school you don’t want to read updates on anymore.
About Shelly Palmer
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with AI strategy, implementation and governance, as well as technology, media and marketing. Named one of LinkedIn’s Top Voices in Technology, he is a bestselling author, covers tech and business for Fox 5’s Good Day New York, is a regular commentator on CNN, and writes the popular daily business blog Think About This. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com.