A new study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science has determined the age at which people are the ‘most popular’ in life, or the age at which people have the ‘most people in our real-life social networks’.
According to The Washington Post, researchers skimmed the phone records for over 3.2 million European telecom customers and determined the age at which meaningful social interactions with the most people takes place, and I have to say that I’m shocked that it’s as old as it is.
Historically the only interesting thing about turning 25 is that you can finally get a rental car without having to pay out the ass for extra insurance. That’s all changed now that researchers have determined that 25-years-old (not H.S. or college, which seems much more plausible) is the age in which people are the ‘most popular’ in life.
WaPo’s Christopher Ingraham reports:
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.
“One important conclusion we can draw is that the average number of contacts is quite modest: in most cases, people focus their (phone-based) social effort each month on around 15 people,” the researchers write. They note that this corresponds to the number of friends and family members people typically have face-to-face interactions with in a given month.
Without seeing the above data, if you were to ask me what I thought the age at which the average human being was the ‘most popular’ in their lives I’d have guessed somewhere between 18 to 22. I’d definitely have gone with a college age in which people are independent for the first time in their lives, and I’ve have been severely wrong.
I don’t know about you bros but I’m shocked to find that it’s 25, I think of those more as the ‘prime earning years’ in which you’re busting your ass at work and moving up the ladder, so by the time you get to 30 you can chillax a little bit on staying at the office after hours. Again, I’d have been wrong in my assessment.
Is anyone else surprised by these findings, that 25 is the most popular age, or is it just me?
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