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Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

phys.org

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Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#51

Post by kulahan »

riazrizvi wrote: post #34
crazygringo wrote: post #15

> "Despite minor differences between individual surveys, the data consistently show that the average number of close friendships rose from 2.2 in 2000 to 4.1 in 2024," says Hofer. If true, this is an astonishing social transformation, because it goes against everything we here about the loneliness epidemic getting worse . Or have people redefined what they consider to be "close friends"? Or are people actually genuin…

Personally, I find modern technology makes it easier to maintain them. 25 years ago my friendships around the world would have been relegated to 'penpalships' because of the cost of long distance calls and the lack of face time. Loneliness is a big topic now due to the pandemic, and the lingering trends from stay/work-at-home mandates.

They probably aren't the friends people are thinking of when referring to things like this. The benefit of friends isn't just that you have someone fun to talk to, it's that you're building out a social support circle. Your discord friends can't come over and help you clean up after a flood, or watch your dogs while you're away on a sudden emergency, or cook you a meal when you're grieving a loss, or help you get an interview at a job shortly after you're fired (or at least, not one local to you).

Loneliness is a big topic now, imo, because people are losing helpful human friends and relying on middling digital friends. Just like how looking at pictures of a forest is nowhere near as healthy as actually going to a forest.

Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#52

Post by johnny22 »

lithocarpus wrote: post #37
gruez wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The solution is to ban all server-side ranking, moderation, and filtering mechanisms and replace them with client-side-only solutions, at least for large platforms above a certain user count like X and YouTube. Same thing for search engines and chatbots. This is such a HN response. A HN reader might think it's fun to spend a weekend on writing/testing a ranking algorithm, but not the average person. They're just goi…

If facebook made it possible to write your own ranking algorithm for what you see, there would be a huge variety of different algorithms you could choose from. 99.9% of end users don't have to write their own they just have to choose whose they want to use - or combine multiple of those available. I think that'd be great, but not for facebook's profits probably.

so how would a user know which one to choose?

I already get analysis paralysis as a software dev enough.

Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#53

Post by grdomzal »

> The sharp rise in both polarization and the number of close friends occurred between 2008 and 2010—precisely when social media platforms and smartphones first achieved widespread adoption. This technological shift may have fundamentally changed how people connect with each other, indirectly promoting polarization.

Indirectly? Seems to me that this is far more likely the "direct" cause, given what we know about the psychology around algorithmic feeds.

Also - I'm not sure if I missed it in the article, but did they define what they mean by "close relationship" means? I'd be very curious to know if a purely online relationship is counted and how this may also contribute to the observations made.

Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#54

Post by henriquemaia »

johnny22 wrote: post #40
mothballed wrote: post #39

Understanding other cultures and giving me a chance to experience them has always been the quickest way to get me to become far more stereotypical / bigoted. I am willing to be open and idealistic about most any idea / ethnicity / culture but once I actually face it in real life and question if I want my kids exposed to that, then the rubber hits the road. The internet has accelerated this.

I've found the opposite of that. I've found good people from all sorts of cultures and countries.

I'm like you and with you.

I've lived in several countries in 3 continents now, and the more I get to know different peoples, the more I feel we're all the same—albeit stuck in these almost kaleidoscopic ways of outwardly displaying the very same humanity.

Perhaps OP got fixated on the collective differences instead of seeing through them. Perhaps.

Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#55

Post by patrickmay »

grdomzal wrote: post #53

> The sharp rise in both polarization and the number of close friends occurred between 2008 and 2010—precisely when social media platforms and smartphones first achieved widespread adoption. This technological shift may have fundamentally changed how people connect with each other, indirectly promoting polarization. Indirectly? Seems to me that this is far more likely the "direct" cause, given what we know about the…

The article said that a close relationship is one where the other person can influence your views. I didn't dig into the details to see how that was measured.

Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#56

Post by dmix »

lukebechtel wrote: post #33

I favor the theory that polarization is due to decreasing attention spans, effectively preventing us from appropriately considering nuance. Related: https://open.substack.com/pub/josephheath/p/populism-fast-an...

Agreed, there's so many headlines on X and Reddit that are obviously highly spun and could take 5 seconds of reading into it to see through the BS. But they kill as long as people agree with the phrasing and people go right to the comments to cheer it on instead of reading the article.

It's tough on the internet being a skeptic or generally thoughtful about the world. It's not even worth debunking stuff anymore. Much healthier to not engage entirely.

Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#57

Post by cowpig »

The study linked at the beginning of this article, and the two listed under "More information" at the bottom all take me to a page with the error

"DOI Not Found"

Given that the main (only significant) fact cited in the article goes against everything else I've read, I would like to see the actual study and how it came to the conclusion that the number of close friends has doubled.

Here are some sources that appear to contradict this article:

https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/the-state-of-a...

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/250617/dq250...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11288408/#pone.0305...

Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#58

Post by cowpig »

crazygringo wrote: post #15

> "Despite minor differences between individual surveys, the data consistently show that the average number of close friendships rose from 2.2 in 2000 to 4.1 in 2024," says Hofer. If true, this is an astonishing social transformation, because it goes against everything we here about the loneliness epidemic getting worse . Or have people redefined what they consider to be "close friends"? Or are people actually genuin…

I can't find any evidence supporting the claim in the article, and the study it links to for me is a dead link. Are you able to find the source?

Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#59

Post by DavidPiper »

The fact that we have more close friends on average is a novel and surprising observation to me. Very worthy of investigation.

But, how is moving from a circle of 2 close friends to a circle of 4 close friends a significant enough jump to "fuel polarization" on a societal level? There's also a 10-year gap between USA (and other countries' data points too) that covers the span of the whole alleged "aligned trend". It feels a little bit like the authors just went "Look! Two data trends moving in the same direction! Causal?!"

More seriously, I would love to see a much deeper dive on:

- Technological and associated psychological trends that might be causing greater polarisation (plenty of existing data here)

- How an increase in close friends can co-exist with an apparent loneliness epidemic (plenty of existing data here too)

Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#60

Post by snozolli »

kulahan wrote: post #51
riazrizvi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I find modern technology makes it easier to maintain them. 25 years ago my friendships around the world would have been relegated to 'penpalships' because of the cost of long distance calls and the lack of face time. Loneliness is a big topic now due to the pandemic, and the lingering trends from stay/work-at-home mandates.

They probably aren't the friends people are thinking of when referring to things like this. The benefit of friends isn't just that you have someone fun to talk to, it's that you're building out a social support circle. Your discord friends can't come over and help you clean up after a flood, or watch your dogs while you're away on a sudden emergency, or cook you a meal when you're grieving a loss, or help you get an…

Your discord friends can't come over and help you clean up after a flood, or watch your dogs while you're away on a sudden emergency, or cook you a meal when you're grieving a loss

I'll make the counter argument that -- although I value those things and try to provide them to friends in need -- all of those can be addressed by hiring someone.

On the other hand, I've recently received fantastic emotional support from a friend who moved away a few years ago. We've seen each other in person only a handful of times since then, but of all my friends, she happened to be the one with the experience and attitude to help me.

Incidentally, I'll add that I'm the type of person to provide those types of support to others, but the vast majority of my friends are not. That doesn't make them bad friends, it just means that I have a service disposition while they don't. I think there's a vast range of qualities that people seek and experience from friends and you're going to have a hard time objectively rating them on any sort of scale.

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