[HN Gopher] Study finds growing social circles may fuel polariza...
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Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization
Author : geox
Score : 74 points
Date : 2025-10-27 19:06 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| dooglius wrote:
| Links are "DOI NOT FOUND". Article does not seem to suggest that
| the study actual found any relationship between the increase in
| the two things, just that they both happened around the same
| time.
| unglaublich wrote:
| The common demoninator is the rise of social media networks.
| smallerize wrote:
| _Unfortunately, even for the most fast-moving journals, that
| time is typically several hours before the actual articles
| appear on the journal's website. So, anyone who's reading
| quickly is likely to find that the DOI fails.
|
| But that rule only applies to the fast-moving journals, like
| Nature and Science. Many other journals can take a few days
| between when they allow journalists to write about a paper and
| when it becomes available to the scientific community--PNAS,
| which is a major source of material for us, falls in that
| category._
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2010/03/dois-and-their-disco...
| foobarian wrote:
| This always seemed intuitively inevitable if you ever played with
| a graph layout tool like dot or similar kinetic layout engine.
| With weak connectivity the nodes don't cluster readily, but with
| more connections they "snap" into rigid subassemblies. It always
| seemed to me like a bad thing for society but it could well be a
| case of "old man yells at moon."
| HPsquared wrote:
| In the limit you get periodic crystal structures when
| connectivity is maxed out and fully optimized.
| txrx0000 wrote:
| The problem isn't connectivity provided by the Internet or the
| average number of friends. Those things are good on their own.
| The problem is centralized moderation in an infinitely connective
| environment (aka the Internet), which will create intellectually
| and ideologically homogenous groups that increase in size without
| limit.
|
| For details see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45515980
|
| 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.
|
| Each person should be able to control what they can post and view
| online, but not what anyone else posts or views. The norms that
| we use to moderate physical public spaces must not be applied to
| online public spaces. Until we discard those norms, people will
| continue to become increasingly polarized, democracy will
| continue to decline worldwide, and violent conflicts will
| continue to increase in frequency and scale.
| gruez wrote:
| >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 going to use whatever the
| platform recommends.
| txrx0000 wrote:
| We need to ban the platform from recommending at all.
|
| It would be like more sophisticated Adblock. There are many
| providers of Adblock lists, but they can't be provided by the
| platform itself.
| kiba wrote:
| Most people will use the default algorithm. A minority will
| choose a different algorithm.
|
| It's only a partial solution. Really, the correct response is
| regulatory oversight and taxation on remaining economic rent.
| They are monopolies, and should be regulated as such.
| philipkglass wrote:
| It's impractical even for tinkerers. YouTube claims to get
| over 20 million videos uploaded daily and it has well over 10
| billion stored videos in its corpus. The metadata alone is
| tens of terabytes. The usual introduction-to-recommendations
| approaches out there are going to completely fall over on an
| item set of this size, even if you have disk space to spare.
| txrx0000 wrote:
| The server can deliver a sparsely randomly sampled RSS feed
| of embedding vectors and metadata.
|
| Fetch media after ranking on-device.
| lithocarpus wrote:
| 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.
| johnny22 wrote:
| so how would a user know which one to choose?
|
| I already get analysis paralysis as a software dev enough.
| p1necone wrote:
| In practice I don't think this really changes anything at least
| for moderation. It takes a bunch of time and effort to moderate
| online communities - under the process outlined by the post you
| linked most communities are going to have a single effective
| clientside moderation list you can subscribe to anyway.
|
| Totally unmoderated internet communities would be completely
| unusable because of spam, and it's also questionable whether
| you could even stay up with _no_ serverside moderation - you 'd
| have to delete stuff otherwise it just takes one script kiddie
| with a botnet to flood your disk space with garbage.
|
| (User produced ranking/filtering algos though I can see being
| viable)
| txrx0000 wrote:
| There are multiple providers of Adblock lists. It would be
| like that, not single-provider.
|
| Regarding banning server-side moderation, we probably can't
| do it without decentralizing content delivery in a BitTorrent
| fashion. But even half measures like replacing moderators
| with client-side filters would be a big improvement.
| lithocarpus wrote:
| Parent isn't saying "totally unmoderated" he's saying the
| client chooses the algorithm/filters.
|
| That means there can be a bunch of algorithms/filters out
| there to choose from (any tech savvy person could make their
| own as a blend of others that exist) and the end user could
| basically choose which feed[s] to subscribe to.
| tsumnia wrote:
| "An information flow model for conflict and fission in small
| groups (1977)" by Wayne W. Zachary
| [https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3629752.pdf]
|
| I know this paper isn't about social networks, but we know this,
| we knew it in the 70s. The only difference is that we continue to
| ignore and forget it.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| In-group dynamics are further ingrained as the group gets bigger.
| If you have 4 friends in a group, their opinions aren't as
| strong. If you have 40 friends in a group, not only are their
| opinions stronger, they'll fight vigorously to defend the group's
| commonly accepted beliefs. So a growing social circle does
| reinforce the group dynamic. (this is well established by lots of
| studies)
|
| But increased polarization around the world isn't because of
| this. There's the typical environmental factors: an increase in
| changes (or challenges) to traditional values increases
| polarization; an influx of migrants increases polarization. But
| then there's also social media, where mastery of "engagement" by
| businesses for profit has been adopted by political groups
| looking to sow division to reap the benefits of polarization (an
| easier grip on power). The rapid rise of polarization is a
| combination of both.
|
| It's nothing new of course, political/ideological groups have
| been doing this forever. We just have far more advanced tools
| with which to polarize.
| txrx0000 wrote:
| Before the Internet and social media, groups had a practical
| size cap because they had to meet up in person. Polarization
| was naturally limited.
|
| I don't think the social media companies' algorithms are
| entirely to blame. But more broadly it's centralized moderation
| of public online spaces.
|
| Moderation of public behavior of physical spaces was only
| necessary because it wasn't possible to selectively filter
| people's influences on eachother in public. If someone is doing
| something you don't want to see in public, covering your eyes
| is not good enough because you also block out the people you do
| want to see. Centralized moderation was a practical half-
| measure rather than an ideal solution for a democratic society
| that values free expression and self-determination.
|
| That kind of moderation isn't necessary online because all
| filters can be implemented client-side. We just aren't doing it
| because people are so used to the old way. But the old way will
| naturally lead to more and worse conflict when we have infinite
| connectivity.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _" 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, and
| because 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 genuinely maintaining more
| friendships because phones make it so much easier to message?
| tanseydavid wrote:
| >> goes against everything we here about the loneliness
| epidemic getting worse
|
| This seems like a hot-take. IMHO one does not and cannot cure
| loneliness by having more online _friends_.
| dijit wrote:
| Yeah, if anything I would say that leans in to the loneliness
| epidemic, if we take things like Dunbars Number to be true.
|
| Having more shallow friends is actually much more isolating
| than having fewer deep friends.
| user2722 wrote:
| Indeed. Conflicting info.
|
| NOTE: I did NOT read the article.
|
| If I'd guess I'd say close friendships meaning is now more
| shallow. Or: younger demographics are against the wider trend.
|
| We can also extrapolate this to unrelated topics, like friend
| groups. Granted, completely unscientific. But if you know two
| or three different friend groups and have a brain cell or two,
| you'll notice group-member-patterns. The Joker; the athletic;
| the geek; etc.. The question I'm trying to get to is: will the
| search for authenticity in a subgroup of a greater acquaintace
| group push you toward the fringes?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Keep in mind that it is "average" and it is about close
| friends.
|
| Anecdotally, the pandemic was the great cutting of weaker ties.
| I talk to far fewer people than I did pre-pandemic (and most
| friends report the same), but I speak to those people more
| often. I can easily see that ending in a way where some 20%
| find themselves with nobody.
|
| I would say I have 4 close friends. But some 10 weaker ties
| disappeared from my life. Did those 10 also double down on
| close friends? Or did perhaps some of them not have enough
| close friends to do that?
| jerlam wrote:
| I would agree - usually close friends are limited to people
| that share the same values and ideas as you. Having more
| close friends that all think alike would increase rejection
| of ideas not shared by other close friends. It is harder (but
| not impossible) to have close friends that have dramatically
| different lifestyles, ideals, or socioeconomic class.
|
| Weaker ties would include friends that have less in common,
| and have different ideas. But that fact that they are a
| friend means that you are aware of their existence and
| different ideas. In that way, having a broad range of weak
| friends suggests that you can see things from different
| perspectives instead of in your own (close) friend bubble.
|
| It's like how people are less likely to know their neighbors
| now, who can hold different ideas. But you don't have to be
| close friends with them to have some empathy.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _usually close friends are limited to people that share
| the same values and ideas as you_
|
| That stirkes me as myopic. My closest friends--the ones I
| trust with all my secrets, with whom have _have_
| practically no secrets, the ones I 'd hide if it came to
| that or risk my life to save--are all over the place values
| and ideas-wise. It's what makes their company fun. It's
| also what makes their advice useful, because they'll call
| me out on my bullshit in a way a mirror image of me could
| not.
| watwut wrote:
| If you are far right, I have to keep secrets from you.
| For safety.
|
| And no, someone actively wanting to limit my freedom and
| safety because their ideology is that women must be
| limited cant be trusted. They cant be trusted in calling
| me on my shit, because what they perceive as shit is my
| self interest and my core values.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Many of my friends live abroad. We started a weekly Zoom
| meeting during Covid-19 lockdown. Now we have a WhatsApp
| group too. Does that change the classification from plain
| friends to close friends?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Oh god flashback, I remember the zoom calls, and people
| acting like they didn't know how zoom worked 10 months into
| it or that the host can mute anyone that doesn't know how
| to mute themselves
|
| I opted out of the extended family ones and the social ones
|
| I wonder if they're still doing that, I'd rather watch
| paint dry, which I did for a few months in San Francisco
| riazrizvi wrote:
| 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.
| kulahan wrote:
| 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.
| snozolli wrote:
| _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.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I have a sinking feeling it's a situation where people who are
| adept at creating and maintaining relationships are getting
| more of them, whilst people who struggle socially are being
| excluded more than ever as a result. The overall count grows,
| but a substantial slice of the population still has barely any.
|
| I have no data for this, just a gut feeling. I still see so
| many people on the day-to-day who are completely socially
| inept. I don't even mean just like, rude or abrasive, I mean
| people who don't have the emotional intelligence to like,
| navigate basic conflicts.
| scarmig wrote:
| It could also be something structural about how the "friendship
| graph" looks. The mean number of friendships isn't the median
| or typically experienced number of friendships, and if
| friendship relationship distributions follow some kind of power
| law, a change in the power-law exponent could make those
| diverge.
| cowpig wrote:
| 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?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Or women have 8 and guys have 1
| watwut wrote:
| When you look at studies, women and men are lonely at about
| the same rate. There are differences at the margins - period
| right after divorce, being stay at home and such. But overall
| rates are the same.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| > have people redefined what they consider to be "close
| friends"?
|
| Yes. People nowadays spent 8 hours per day chatting to someone
| online and they call it close friend even if they never met in
| real life.
|
| Also, people nowadays are notorious for being unable to have
| friendship that is not a [insert activity here] buddy.
| zkmon wrote:
| Polarization maybe a bit unclear word here. Connectivity creates
| cohesion, which creates larger creatures. So what we have is,
| virtual monsters roaming around with huge human groups riding on
| them. They can organize real protests, polarized opinion and
| massive impact wherever these monsters go.
| zwnow wrote:
| Monsters is a interesting choice of words. Why call it
| monsters?
|
| Isn't polarization a good thing? If I was enslaved by tyrants
| making my life worse everyday, shouldn't I be opposed by their
| ways?
| thefz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
|
| Thanks to David Wong for explaining this in JDATE, calling it the
| Babel threshold.
| ZebusJesus wrote:
| group think has always been dangerous, 1984 come to mind
| dauertewigkeit wrote:
| better connectivity -> people finding better friendship matches
| -> groups are more homogenous -> more polarization
| HPsquared wrote:
| Self-actualisation often leads to conflict.
| txrx0000 wrote:
| I think the causal relationship is not quite that way.
|
| better connectivity -> destroyed physical limits on group size
| -> groups not only get larger but also more ideologically
| homogenous because they're moderated by a central authority
| like how physical crowds are moderated -> people make friends
| more easily in those homogenous groups OR get kicked and start
| their own group, which also has the potential to get larger and
| more homogenous without limit -> groups have larger differences
| and clash harder
|
| More friends is a symptom rather than a cause.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| You can have 10 "friends". 3 close ones. Anything larger than
| that and you are way out of your depth and can't possibly
| maintain those relationships in a meaningful, personal way.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Definitely. Close relationships of any kind involve a lot of
| investment and "costly signals".
| lukebechtel wrote:
| 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...
| th0ma5 wrote:
| That's one of Chomsky's major points for decades.
| lukebechtel wrote:
| embarrassingly haven't dug into Chomsky, this is another
| update towards me doing so soon!
| DavidPiper wrote:
| OT: As someone in the same camp, does anyone have any
| recommendations on where would be best to start?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _That 's one of Chomsky's major points for decades_
|
| Curious for the source? To my recollection, Chomsky talked
| about distraction, _i.e._ repurposing attention. OP is
| talking about the pool of attention as a whole drying up
| (versus being misdirected).
| dmix wrote:
| 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.
| Grikbdl wrote:
| I can no longer engage in (controversial) debates on other
| social medias, as responses often indicate a lack of
| understanding with the other person - they glance over the
| arguments, make a prejudice-based opinion, and then they
| respond to their straw man, often loaded with bad emotions.
| It's quite frustrating and as you say, sadly only solution is
| to disengage, but in so doing the polarisation only increases
| as dissenting opinions are removing themselves.
| dmix wrote:
| > but in so doing the polarization only increases as
| dissenting opinions are removing themselves.
|
| It used to make sense when the internet was smaller but
| now? Not so much. Especially when the people running
| platforms/media, content moderators and influencers
| explicitly don't care about the truth. You're not just
| fighting some dummy posting a comment.
|
| The only positive thing I've seen in the last decade to
| address this was Community Notes on X.
| mackeye wrote:
| i think this is a good article, but these statements,
|
| > If populism is merely a strategy, not an ideology, then why
| are certain ideas seemingly present in all populist movements
| (such as the hostility to foreigners, or the distrust of
| central banking)? > For example, why are "the people" always
| conceptualized as a culturally homogeneous mass, even in the
| context of societies that are quite pluralistic (which forces
| the introduction of additional constructs, such as la France
| profonde, or "real Americans")?
|
| ... are not quite as applicable to left-wing populism (for the
| latter --- at least, at the surface). post-colonial, _left-
| wing_ populism tended to be of international character, or at
| least of wider appeal than the nation (e.g., nasser). the
| "distrust of central banking" is of wildly unique impetuses for
| left- vs. right-wing populism.
|
| the common-sense point is quite poignant, at least for me in
| the u.s., where each party paints their own solutions as
| explicitly "common-sense", for solutions as unique as harsh
| border control ("solutions") vs. city-owned grocery stores &
| free childcare.
|
| there are certainly issues i imagine i don't hold the "elite"
| view on. many people don't consider the "elite" view at all ---
| anti-punitive justice, for example, is rejected for particular
| types of crimes, despite provenly worse outcomes if we simply
| punish these crimes. the rise of anti-intellectualism doesn't
| help :D
| mothballed wrote:
| 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.
| johnny22 wrote:
| I've found the opposite of that. I've found good people from
| all sorts of cultures and countries.
| henriquemaia wrote:
| 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.
| grdomzal wrote:
| > 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.
| patrickmay wrote:
| 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.
| grdomzal wrote:
| Thanks! I tried clicking into the linked research paper but
| got a 404 >.<
| cowpig wrote:
| 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...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| This might be it?
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1004008107
| DavidPiper wrote:
| 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)
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > 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?
|
| You add 2 close friends and to fit them in, axe 10 weaker ones.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _You add 2 close friends and to fit them in, axe 10 weaker
| ones_
|
| I did this after Covid. Consciously started declining
| invitations from acquaintances, and instead making time and
| travel to see close friends. Would never go back.
| DavidPiper wrote:
| In this case it sounds like the polarisation is fueled by the
| axing and not the adding?
| bicx wrote:
| I'm more interested in how people determine who they trust, and
| the parameters by which humans decide to trust someone.
|
| I would wager that people are shit at determining trustworthiness
| based on limited information (like social media representations).
| In the old days before social media, you got to know people in
| person, and decades ago, most of the people you knew were likely
| people you grew up around. You knew that person's background, how
| they treated people, what their family was like, and what likely
| influences them as a person.
|
| So much of how we process trustworthiness is how we perceive the
| motives of the speaker. With shallower friendships and parasocial
| relationships, we want to feel connected but really lack any good
| context that you need to actually know who you're listening to.
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