What Is The Reason Why Facebook Is Deleting My Friends Automatically
It used to be that adding friends on Facebook was all there was to it. That is no longer the case. It’s all about removing Facebook pals at the moment. Here are some of the reasons for why facebook needs to delete your friends automatically. We will be discussing step by step.
- It’s Harmful to Your Mental Health
How many Facebook friends should you have? It’s an age-old question.
According to studies, we have trouble maintaining more than 150 real-life connections at the same time. The phenomenon is known as “Dunbar’s Number,” after the Oxford University anthropologist who found it. Any number higher than that, he says, begins to “tax the cognitive capability of the human brain.”
That number, according to Dunbar, also applies to the internet world:
The funny thing is that you may have 1,500 friends on Facebook, but when you look at site traffic, you’ll see that individuals keep the same inner circle of about 150 people that we see in real life.
If we start with that figure and throw in a few long-lost school pals and other individuals you need to stay in contact with on a regular basis, we’re looking at a total of 200-250 Facebook friends.
The evidence backs up this figure. On Facebook, the average number of friends is 338, while the median is just about 200. That implies that some individuals have a disproportionately large number of friends, skewing the mean average.
- You’re Putting Your Best Relationships at Risk
If you’re one of the 15% of Facebook users with more than 500 friends, you may be risking your most essential connections for a few online praises.
While writing for The New Yorker, Maria Konnikova was the first to highlight the issue, saying:
We can easily keep up with the lives and interests of more than 150 individuals thanks to social media. However, we lack deeper ties to them without spending face-to-face time, and the time we spend on superficial relationships comes at the cost of more meaningful ones.
Dunbar backs her up, stating, “You’ve got a certain amount of social capital. It requires time commitment. When you make more connections, your set quantity of social capital is distributed more widely, resulting in a lower average capital per person.”
It seems that recognizing the distinction between real-life and virtual pals is the key.
Is it OK to use your phone at a family dinner to make a funny comment on a picture of someone you met on a Thai beach? Obviously not. Is it, however, a good idea to keep track of that connection on Facebook in case you wish to revisit it in the future? Possibly.
- It Assists You in Maintaining Your Privacy
Aside from academic grounds, there are a slew of practical reasons to delete Facebook friends.
One of the most important is privacy. Yes, we know Facebook offers a slew of options for restricting access to pictures, posts, and personal data to specific groups of your friends, but few people utilize them to their full potential. (Be honest, how many of you have taken the effort to create specialized groups of close friends with whom you may exchange information?)
Facebook has been around for decades, and if you were one of the early adopters, you’re likely to be among the 15% of users with more than 500 friends.
You must decide whether or not you want all of these individuals in your life (and whether you want to keep creeping on theirs).
You know how it is: you have pals on your list who you haven’t talked to since elementary school, but you know their children’s names and how many times they’ve been married. Worse, these individuals already know all there is to know about you. That’s a strange situation.
If you really want to start worrying about your privacy, take a look at our list of everything Facebook knows about you.
- It will assist you in cleaning up your news feed
This is also a good reason to dislike things like airlines and hotels: it will make your News Feed cleaner and more pleasant to browse.
Do you really care if your former employer has booked a table at a Prague restaurant? Or that a club you used to frequent in college is selling tickets for its newest Tuesday night extravaganza?
It all comes back to the conversation between Dunbar and Konnikova. By removing your friends (and likes), the news you should care about will appear more prominently on your feed, enabling you to focus on the connections that are essential to you while discarding the ones that aren’t.
- People Are Simply Inconvenient
A lot of study has been done on “annoying” Facebook postings. We’ve looked at the topic of vaguebooking before, but that just scratches the surface of the issue.
In2014, 2,000 individuals were polled on why they would remove someone from the site. The following are some of the explanations given:
- 68 percent of people boast too much.
- Sixty-six percent of people have a pointing status.
- Requests for games are up to 48%.
- 41% of people want to be noticed.
- Selfies are taken in excess by 38% of people.
It makes logical to block individuals whose online postings irritate you. Why should you allow someone else’s social media feed to annoy you? There are already enough things that irritate us in the world.
There are methods to gently ignore someone on Facebook if they’re a real close friend. If they don’t comply, give them the elbow.
What Factors Should You Consider When Unfriending People on Facebook?
It’s all well and well to make these arguments, but when it comes down to it, and your mouse is hovering over the unfriend button, it all seems a little definitive.
What makes you think you won’t run into them again in five years and become BFFs? What if they figure out you’ve thrown them out?
One Last Thought
Unfriending criteria must be determined by each individual. Focus on old school friends, former coworkers, individuals you met on vacation, and odd common acquaintances from the past. We guarantee you won’t miss them.
