This is when you're most popular, according to science | Hacker News Reader

This is when you're most popular, according to science

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12 pointsrandomname212 comments

Frankly: why would anyone even bother publishing this garbage?

It's obvious that "popularity" != cell phone call record frequency. (Note that age is a severe confounder -- the 50 year-olds in the study most likely did not even have cell phones at age 25...)

> why would anyone even bother publishing this garbage?

If by "this garbage" you mean this goofy blog post, then that's a good question. But note that goofy blog posts abound.

The article published in Royal Society Open Science doesn't even mention "popularity". That's just this goofy blog post's clickbaity take on it, and basically unrelated to the actual study.

>> This is when you're most popular, according to science

One study == "according to science"

> They found that the average number of people a person calls (or is called by) in a given month peaks around age 25.

Number of people you call == how popular you are. How out of touch with the times...

Consider the following confounding variables:

Having children might reduce the number of people you spend time with.

I have a few other ideas (finding a spouse also cuts down on the amount of time you spend out looking for one), but that's the big idea.

I wish they would run the numbers adjusting for parenthood.

> Having children might reduce the number of people you spend time with.

That is something that they bring up in the actual paper.

http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royopensci/3/...

I think another valuable point to consider that may actually may understate popularity of those younger than 25 is that this is only looking at phone calls. I'm not under 25 anymore, but I think they generally use their phones for texting and messaging more than calls.

They analysed one year of phone records for a phone company. And basically what they found was that 25 year olds actually talk to a wider variety of people than other age groups... Not popularity. Not how many friends one has, and not how large one's social circle is.

I'll agree with the others, completely out of touch and a weird click-bait headline.

Does this stuff actually matter past school? If so, I'm doing life wrong.

"in most cases, people focus their (phone-based) social effort each month on around 15 people"

15 people??? Jeez! I had a hard enough time keeping up with 5!

How come the graph for "Everyone" is not in between of Men and Women?

Probably more of one gender participated in the study than the other.

>You're never more popular than you are at age 25.

>Researchers analyzed one full year's worth of cell phone call records for 3.2 million customers of a European telecom company. They found that the average number of people a person calls (or is called by) in a given month peaks around age 25. After that, your number of regular social connections nosedives until age 45 or so. Take a look.

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