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The friendship game (or building a CV for strangers)

Colin Campbell
by Colin Campbell on 11/01/25 18:00

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In the 1990s, an anthropologist called Robin Dunbar postulated that the size of a casual friendship group, or number of acquaintances that any single individual could sustain, was in the region of 150.

This (at least on the face of it) had a reasonably sound scientific basis in anthropology, based on the size of humans' brains, their ability to cognitively attach to people, and also, historically, the size that human groups would graduate towards before technology and society was better formed.

Dunbar's number suggests that our brains are hardwired for groups of that size because we tend to want safety and security in groups of that size, and out with this size, rules, doubts, and anxieties appear in the size of the groups we have.

I remember first coming across Dunbar's number about 15 years ago and wondering, in my own circle, how many people I considered to be there and whether I was trying to build bigger groups or more acquaintances beyond that, which was actually feasible or possible.

The point of this is that we know that social media has pushed us towards a position where we are 'friends' with so many people that we've never met and don't have anything in common with, and we know that there is a huge rise in anxiety, which may well be contributed from the fact that we have less and less social connection (pay attention to your teenage children to see how they interact with people now). 

For my own peace, I find that I'm trying to fight against the urge to do more things which provide me with the satisfaction of self-esteem but take me away from the people I like.

For many years I pursued endurance sports (and I still do to one degree or another), but there is no doubt in the pursuit that I was really happy to tell people what I'd done and to show them my medals and to make myself feel that I was exceeding expectation of being that 'anxious overachiever' that I clearly am. 

The problem with this is that I spent a lot of my time on my own (not always a bad thing), but taking me away from doing things with people I liked, people I cared about, and people I wanted to be with.

I've got older now, and I've moved away from endurance sports more because I'm simply not fit enough or my body is too broken to be able to participate in it, but what I see back now is that the advantage of going running 7 times a week for an hour and a half each time is clearly beneficial in the physical sense but taking some of that time back to go for a coffee with your friend and to sit and chat and laugh is at least as important.

And so it's a balance thing, which seems pretty obvious, but I still have to remind myself of this.

Spending time with people I care about, people that I actually like, instead of building a CV that is impressive to strangers, might just help me live a little bit longer than I otherwise would.

 

Blog Post Number - 4049

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Colin Campbell
Written by Colin Campbell
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