*** Disclosure: I am a Global Ambassador of Sandbox***

“Don’t be afraid to use your knuckles.” This is the advice given to me by DJ Saul, who is teaching a small group of us how to throw a proper punch. DJ, when not playing Mr. Miyagi to our Karate Kid is the VP of New Ventures at iStrategy Labs and one of our DC Ambassadors. He’s volunteered to share his knowledge about some of the basics of self defence for one of our afternoon sessions.

I’m in Lisbon, Portugal for the first ever Sandbox Global Summit. Sandbox is a global network of selected innovators under 30, a community of over 600 people in 48 countries and 23 hub cities, including Cairo, New York, Nairobi, Singapore, Mexico City, Bangalore, and San Francisco.

Our members include innovators such as Cynthia Hellen from New York, founder of GIRLS WHO ROCK, a benefit concert fundraising for girls’ education worldwide while mentoring local volunteers to be leaders;Sebastian Lindstrom from Nairobi, who travelled 20 African countries to produce a documentary on young leaders with his What Took You So Long Foundation; and Marita Cheng from Sydney, recently announced as the Young Australian of the Year, founder of Robogals Global, who is using the art of building robots to get more girls excited about the engineering discipline, discussed their experiences, stories and key learnings from diverse fields.

Held at MUDE (the design museum), 200 Boxers and various mentors gathered to share ideas, wisdom, and laughter for one jam-packed, whirlwind of a weekend. The goal of this gathering was to foster meaningful relationships within a community that is driven to create a positive impact in the world.

Peer to Peer Learning: We’re in this together

The vibe is laid back, fun, and inspiring. There are no speakers here, instead Sandboxers host peer-to-peer sessions covering a wide variety of subjects:

•  «On Stealing Ideas» by Mattan Griffel, CEO of a NYC-based digital agency

• «How to have the luck of the Irish and pour the perfect pint of Guinness» by William McQuillan, Founder and CEO of Osmoda.com

•  «Social enterprise future moulded by Asia» by Kalsoom Lakhani, Founder of Invest2Innovate, and Achyutha Sharma, Director of Sulochana Development Trust.

Friendships First: What do you need? How can I help?

What set this weekend apart was the unwavering sense of giving and support, coupled with the desire to help each other overcome challenges. “What do you need? How can I help?” were two of the most often repeated questions I heard throughout the weekend. Boxers are genuinely invested in helping each other succeed.

It doesn’t feel like a network, it feels like a family, an online community of kindred spirits, punctuated by real life meetings. Prior to meeting in person, I had only exchanged a few emails with John Egan (Dublin Ambassador, Founder Archipelago), yet we slipped effortlessly into hour long conversations as though we’d known each other for years.  I quickly discovered that I shared an identical sense of humor to our Amsterdam ambassador Tim Rutten  and was laughing non-stop for three whole days.

Somehow, I had found myself in the middle of a global network with some of the most caring, intelligent, inspiring people I have ever met. Tara (Port-du-Prince), Niamh (New York), Kalsoom (the magical land of Pakistan), Nico (Zurich), Fabian (New York), Antoine (Berlin), Steve (New York), John R (Wagadu), Toby (Amsterdam), Will (London), Kasper (Copenhagen), Gamal (Cairo) have become an important part of my digital tribe, essential anchors of support, friendship and humor that I can count on as I navigate the perils and pitfalls of following an unconventional life path.

In fact, I had the opportunity to catch up with one of my closest friends Robyn Scott (Author, Founder of OneLeap.to, and another friendship I have Sandbox to thank for) who echoed my sentiments. “It’s rare to find a gathering of people that embody a sense of family who are all brilliant and have your best interests at heart.”

If this all sounds a little sentimental it’s is because, to be honest, I was caught completely off guard. I’ve never bonded with so many people at once before or shared such strong connections right off the bat.

I will be following up this post with a more analytic perspective of technology’s impact on the the creation and maintenance of these types of networks and what it means for relationship building.

For now, I’m just looking at my calendar, already eagerly anticipating the next time we can all be together again.

Thanks to social-networking sites like Facebook, many of the people that otherwise would have drifted out of our lives can now be linked to us indefinitely online, keeping track of us in the virtual world even if we no longer have any contact with them in “real life.” It’s a peculiar situation, evidenced by the introduction of terms like “Facebook Creeping” and FOMO (fear of missing out) into our vocabularies. But what are the wider implications of these changes?

Social networks enable us to cheat the natural order of things. In our ability to pore over photo albums and analyze status updates, we gain access to information that’s generally reserved for a close friend without actually having to be one. We look at others’ profiles because we are nosy, and because we want to make sure we’re not missing out – that we’re on par with our colleagues and friends. Furthermore, social networks create unnatural digital bonds that keep us entangled in unnecessary relationships. Most of the time it’s harmless, but in certain cases (ex-boyfriends, toxic friendships) these relationships could be unhealthy. A 2011 study identified a condition called “Facebook Envy” arguing that reading what others share on social networks might actually have a negative impact on mood. The existence of “Facebook Depression” is also being debated among health-care professionals.

I believe it is the lack of natural social decay that is driving some of these behaviours. After all, while some relationships end explosively, the majority decay naturally in a slow and gradual process. We drift apart. We lose contact. Far from replicating this natural passive disconnection online, we are forced to deliberately hit the “Unfriend” button, severing the connection in a swift and decisive manner. “Unfriending” is seen as a digitally aggressive act, and can often carry social implications in the real world. (An extreme example: In Iowa, a woman was arrested for burning down the house of someone who had unfriended her on Facebook.) It’s much easier to simply stay connected to these people online, even if we never communicate with them. Thus, we continue to be “Facebook friends” with people who aren’t really our friends.

Is it really necessary to stay connected to such people? Of course not, but many of us do so because it’s easier than having to look your colleague in the eye and explain why you haven’t accepted his or her friend request yet. We’d rather avoid that awkward moment, so we continue to broadcast pieces of our digital selves to an ever-growing circle that includes bosses, acquaintances, and distant relatives. The result? A need for better and more comprehensive privacy policies that take into account these social complexities.

These policies, however, are often in opposition to the corporate bottom line. Consider, for instance, Facebook’s never-ending push for users to publicly share more information about themselves. It is in Facebook’s best interest for us to continue to “friend” as many people as possible, as it provides the company with more data that it can extract and sell. As a result, Facebook is becoming a broader web that documents the connections of the people we have encountered in our lives, rather than a representation of our closest friends. For Mark Zuckerberg, social decay shouldn’t exist at all.

This, however, is not the only option.

One company that is introducing an alternative approach is Path, a mobile social network that uses the principles of Dunbar’s Number in an effort to manage social decay. Dunbar’s Number (commonly cited as 150) comes from the work of British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, and represents the “cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships.”

Once users reach that 150 limit on Path, they’ll only be able to add another friend by cutting someone from their list. In this way, Path forces people to constantly evaluate their existing friendships by facing social decay head on.

It will be interesting to see how this social dynamic plays out. If I have 1,000 friends, I might not notice if someone has unfriended me – but I will definitely notice if I’m cut from a list of 150 people, especially if we have mutual friends. What impact will this have?

In this age of social networking, algorithms will continue to evolve to account for the various types of digital relationships that we have. Facebook and Path seem to be taking this in two very different directions, but is either one the right solution? Is there a way to organize our social relationships online that doesn’t lead to unhealthy behaviour?

Also posted on The Mark News