I forgot to add that psychology's attachment theory offers some fascinating insights to this: [researchgate.net] The suggestion here is that because of our expanding craniums and the resulting "fourth trimester" due to increasingly premature births (to fit the head through the birth canal without killing infant or mother), the attachment mechanism usually in effect between infants and mothers was parsimoniously recycled to cause partners to be more likely to pair bond for increased survival of the offspring. It's not too far a leap to suggest that our increased sensitivity and capacity for attachment extended to others in-group, leading to a more robust (and complex) social structure. It does beg the question of increased cranial size, in a which-came-first situation, but that's not fatal to the integration of the theories.

@mudhen Ha ha! And more to the point: Oh wow! What an awesome opportunity. I love the wit, humor, and sheer brilliance on display in his book. I’m envious you get to meet him. Would you be kind enough to report back on how it went? I’m going to follow you so I can see your posts.

From what little I can derive from an abstract I found in Google, the biggest question that comes to my mind -if this hypothesis turns out to have some merit- is whether social media (technology in general) has found one more way to short-circuit human evolution.

@McVinegar My point precisely. I would argue that since the advent of agriculture (feel free to move that needle if you have a better idea of where it should go), human evolution has moved beyond simple natural selection, further and further toward a sort of ARTIFICIAL selection, anthropogenic in nature. We more and more control the outcomes of our evolution and frankly, the evolution of our surrounding environment, even to the degree of planetary evolution.
When I used the term "short-circuit," it wasn't meant as a judgement of good or bad -Some effects can clearly be seen now and some have yet to be known or understood, but I withhold those judgements until those effects CAN be measured. I used short-circuit just to highlight how the normal paths of natural selection have been bypassed through social and technological means.

@Donotbelieve it’s relevant.

@Donotbelieve any link is better than none. (Just ask Zelda)