If you've ever played Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, you know it's a game based on the theory that any 2 people on Earth are 6 or fewer connections apart from one another (or, in this case, from actor Kevin Bacon). With social media, it's probably not hard to find out what acquaintance you share with the people in your streetcar or waiting alongside you at the crosswalk.
You may even be “friends” already.
In your 20s, it's easy to fall into a hunter-gatherer relationship with digital friendships. You meet people at parties and connect online. Workplaces often offer a steady flow of fresh social media connections. Plus, those friends from high school, grade school, your travels, old jobs and so on, are all added to your profile until the number of contacts swells.
Oxford University anthropologist Robin Dunbar's research surrounding primate brain size and social groups predicted that we have the ability to maintain about 150 friendships (which coincides with the average number of friends Facebook users tend to have: 155). After that, things get murky.“
Social media certainly help to slow down the natural rate of decay in relationship quality that would set in once we cannot readily meet friends face-to-face,” Dunbar told The TelegraphOpens a new window in your browser.. “But no amount of social media will prevent a friend eventually becoming ‘just another acquaintance’ if you don't meet face-to-face from time to time.”
It's become so much easier to connect quickly through digital channels like social media and email. But for a lot of relationships, trust is established in person, not digitally. So, if you've made those friendships in real life, it's about reconnecting with that initial sense of trust. Even just asking to meet up over a coffee or lunch can be enough to tap into that feeling of security.
Time is also key when it comes to friendship, according to researchOpens a new window in your browser.. Around 30 hours of socializing gets you to casual friend territory, and another 110 hours means you're “real friends”. It takes 300 hours overall to become close friends. But the study also points out that we make fairly quick decisions over the “desirability and likability” of someone after a short time together.
With that in mind, try rekindling an old friendship over coffee or grabbing a bite with a colleague you haven't seen in a while. It'll help you gauge if the spark is still there and worth nurturing. If not, you've likely got a social media page of potential friendships waiting to be explored.