Are social skills in danger, in a hyper-connected world? Robin Dunbar offers some answers

We are in contact with more people today – conducting more social interactions and processing more information, on average – than would have been thought possible, through most of human history. We’re having to model our minds to match the state of these other people’s minds.” What does it do to the brain, then, to have hundreds of complex interactions a day? ‘I think the important issue for kids now is learning the skills that make social life possible for us, particularly the skills of diplomacy,’ Dunbar says. We’ve shown with brain-imaging studies that the processing of social information is much more costly for the brain than processing just ordinary physical information, like navigating a street or deciding what to eat. I think the important issue for kids now is learning the skills that make social life possible for us, particularly in our big, modern societies – particularly the skills of diplomacy.