Over 200 Facebook friends not possible: study

An interesting piece of research on Facebook friendship reveals that the average number of really close friends people have is under 200, with women having more genuine friends than men.

Psychologist professor Robin Dunbar from the University of Oxford who conducted two surveys, among regular social media users found that the average number of friends they had on Facebook was 155 in the first survey and 183 in the second.

Women had more friends than men (averaging 166 in the first sample as against 145 for men while in the second, it was 196 vs 157). Not surprisingly - older generations had fewer friends than younger ones, Dunbar found.

According to Dunbar, social media certainly helped to slow down the natural rate of decay in relationship quality that would set in once it was not possible to meet friends face-to-face.

"But no amount of social media will prevent a friend eventually becoming 'just another acquaintance' if you don't meet face-to-face from time to time,'' Dunbar explained in a paper published in Royal Society Open Science journal.

"There is something paramount about face-to-face interactions that is crucial for maintaining friendships. Seeing the white of their eyes from time to time seems to be crucial to the way we maintain friendships,'' he added.

Limitations on brain capacity and free time means humans cannot nurture more than about 150 true friendships on social media, just as in real life, according to the study.

The rest were acquaintances, or people recognised on sight.

A theoretical limit of 150 friends had come to be known as "Dunbar's Number" after Dunbar, coined the concept.

"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."