National Unfriend Day promotes reducing your friend list

On his show, Jimmy Kimmel discussed a brand new national “holiday.” He announced Nov. 17 being “National Unfriend Day”. National Unfriend Day was started as a day to cut down your friends list. This is because we simply have “too many friends”. Though meant just as a gimmick, the reasoning behind National Unfriend Day has a solid basis in sociological analysis.

Kimmel planning for making National Unfriend Day occur

On his late-night show, Kimmel had a long discussion concerning exactly what a “friend” really is. He explained that someone we went to high school with could be a friend, or they might not. He does not like that there isn't much meaning to the word "friend" anymore. He hopes that individuals will help get back to the real meaning. The goal of National Unfriend Day is simple — cut down your Facebook Friends catalog to the individuals you really wish to have a relationship with.

The sociological foundation of National Unfriend Day

Scientific analysis actually has gone into National Unfriend Day, although it seems odd. Researcher Robin Dunbar published a book called “How Many Friends Does One Person Need” that argues the upper limit of relationships any one person can maintain is 150. This conclusion was reached by studying the social networks of primates and human history. Only so many issues can go on at one time in the human brain while it’s nearly extremely hard to maintain more than that.

Seeing a couple of difficulties connected with National Unfriend Day

A few hard social situations would be confronted with Facebook on National Unfriend Day. The new social network and photo sharing site Path is intended to keep friends limited to 50. There’s a lot of "friending" of people you don't really know because of networking and attempting to build relationships. Your social network typically has to include people from work and your social life. It would be hard to limit this to 50, or perhaps even 150 for that make a difference, since anyone inside your life just just a little is typically your friend. Do you have an opinion on it? Are you planning to just ignore National Unfriend Day or do you plan on "celebrating" it?

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