The unrevealed trauma - Dubai Women's College - Higher Colleges ...

50 51
need an Internet connection and
an account in any preferred social
network website.
Cyber network communities
differ from normal face to face
interactions. Sana Husain Al
Marzouqi, 20 year old Emirati
blogger of “The S Letters” admits,
“Of course, face to face friendships
are much better than cyber
friendships. They are more
personalized. A person is not
only what they type or say, there
is much more than that. One’s
personality includes their gestures,
their body language, their appearance,
the way they talk, and eye
contact; all contribute to knowing
a person better.” Hence, Al Marzouqi
views cyber friendships as
potential face to face friendships.
Merging online life with real life
can be quite challenging. People
can get lost in limbo. Also, trust
issues arise as cyber relationships
are often anonymous. Dr. Layla
Abdulwahab Asamarai, Senior
Clinical Psychologist & Head of
Psychology at Rashid Hospital
says, “Interestingly, sometimes
individuals experience very
different reactions when meeting
their cyber friends face to face,
and sometimes the reaction
tends to be one of disinterest
or confusion.”
In the cyber world human behavior
may be doubtful, especially
when meeting someone new.
You never know the true person
on the other side of the screen.
“Individuals in cyber space are
free to embody various aspects
of the character or fantasies that
they may not be able to enact in
a face to face relationship. While
this may be freeing for some as
they can express themselves more
openly online, sometimes this
split between cyber and real is no
more than an inaccuracy,” explains
Dr. Asamarai.
DUNBAR
EMPHASIZED THE
FACT THAT THE
RELATIONSHIPS
BETWEEN YOUR-
SELF AND THE 150
PEOPLE IS NOT
JUST ABOUT
REMEMBERING
FACES AND NAMES,
IT’S ABOUT TRUST,
OBLIGATION, AND
DEDICATION TO
ONE ANOTHER.
However, some people believe
that it is possible to create a
real emotional bond with others
online. “Facebook and other social
network sites allow us to maintain
friendships that would otherwise
rapidly wither away. And they
do something else that’s probably
more important, if much less
obvious; they allow us to reintegrate
our networks so that, rather
than having several disconnected
subsets of friends, we can rebuild,
albeit virtually, the kind of old
rural communities where everyone
knew everyone else. Welcome to
the electronic village.” (The New
York Times online December 25,
2010.)
One of the most important
aspects in social networks is the
live interaction amongst people.
Social network friendships are
similar to investments. If you
really want to make these relationships
last, you need to put in
energy, time, and commitment.
It’s not enough to just browse and
feel proud of the huge number of
friends you have in your list.
Quality communication is the
ultimate key factor in rejuvenating
your friendships.
The real question is: how many
meaningful social friendships can
we maintain? “We can only ever
have 150 friends at most, and
that’s the reason why Facebook
cannot expand our true social
circle; our brains just aren’t big
enough to cope.” (Guardian online
March 14, 2010.) This is now
known as Dunbar’s number.
Robin Dunbar is an evolutionary
anthropologist who teaches at
Oxford University. His work and
ideas describe the correlation
between the size of a specific
part of an individual’s brain and
the size of that individual’s social
network activities. He supports this
idea by presenting his hypothesis
that claims: “There is a cognitive
limit to the number of individuals
with whom any one person
can maintain stable relationships,
this limit is a direct function of
relative neocortex size, and this
in turn limits group size. The limit
imposed by neocortical processing
capacity is simply on the number
of individuals with whom a stable
inter-personal relationship can be
maintained.” (“Life With Alacrity”
online March 10, 2004.)
According to the “Guardian”
online March 14, 2010, Dunbar’s
number “150” goes back to the
18th century. Dunbar studied
the number of people who were
living in counties, villages, and
How many meaningful social friendships can we maintain? Reem Ahli/DWC
communities and concluded that
the lucky number was indeed
150. Dunbar emphasized the fact
that the relationships between
yourself and the 150 people is not
just about remembering faces and
names, it’s about trust, obligation,
and dedication to one another.
These are the factors required in
order to start a meaningful relationship,
and make it count.
This illustrates the importance of
social networks in our daily lives,
and how it has become essential
to search and understand this
evolution. The era of online shopping
and website browsing has
gone, instead is the new era of
socializing with people from
different parts of the world,
hoping to obtain meaningful
relationships. Dunbar’s number
proves how much time people
are willing to spend getting to
know each other. (The Wall Street
Journal online February 12, 2012)
Nick Humphrey, a consciousness
expert, believes that human
beings have big brains not for
the purpose of understanding
the world we live in, but to
understand each other.
Dr. Asamarai supports the above
statement by referring to the time
each individual spends trying to
understand oneself while learning
about others at the same time.
“It is not surprising to hear that
our greatest quest is to understand
each other,” said Dr.
Asamari.
It is also significant to highlight
that going from one relationship
to the next results in better understanding
of each other as well as
oneself, which eventually leads
to finding true friendships that
count.