It’s Unusual For A Person To Have More Than 150 True Friends On Social Media

You cannot have 1,000 real friends on Facebook. Nor 500. In fact, anything over 200 starts seeming unlikely, according to a new study. A theoretical limit of 150 friends has become known as “Dunbar’s Number” after British evolutionary psychologist Professor Robin Dunbar, who coined the concept. He also authored the new study, and concluded the same limits applied online.

“There is some flexibility, perhaps, but not very much, and it mostly depends on how weak or strong you want your friendships to be,” Professor Dunbar said.

“It is as though we each have a limited amount of social capital and we can choose to invest it thinly in more people, or thickly in fewer people. But you can’t exceed these limits.”

According to Professor Dunbar, human relationships are layered in ever larger circles from closest to furthest. People can (and sometimes do) have 500 or even 1,000 friends on Facebook, but all they are doing is including people who we would normally call acquaintances.

Limitations on brain capacity and free time mean humans can nurture no more than about 150 true friendships on social media, just as in real life, the study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science says. The rest are acquaintances, or people recognised on sight.

We have on average five intimate friends, 15 best friends, 50 good friends, 150 friends, 500 acquaintances and 1,500 people we recognise on sight.

“The 150 layer is the important one: this defines the people you have real reciprocated relationships with, those where you feel obligations and would willingly do favours,” Professor Robin Dunbar said.

“People can (and sometimes do) have 500 or even 1,000 friends on Facebook, but all they are doing is including people who we would normally call acquaintances or people we just recognise by sight but don’t know very well.”