In Robin Dunbar’s book, How Many Friends Does One Person Need? he claims that the maximum number of friendships that the human mind is capable of handling is 150. The University of Oxford professor has determined that the ‘Dunbar Number’, as it is known, applies to Facebook friends as well.
According to Dunbar, “The volume of the neocortex region of our brain, used for language and thought, limits the number of friends we can maintain. He argues this number has not changed much throughout history and applies in the same way on the web as it does in real life. He even goes as far as to say that anyone who claims to have more is ‘suspect’, as the quality of relationships deteriorates as the social group widens.”
As someone that keeps a pretty close eye on what’s happening in my online universe, I’m beginning notice a few trends that may support Professor Dunbar’s research.
- More and more of my Facebook friends are spring cleaning their accounts. Meaning, they are going through each of their friends to determine if they’re relevant in their network of social contacts.
- Due to security threats, Facebook account owners are now taking privacy seriously — Grouping our friends and then assigning different security settings to each group. We’re faced with the question of how much of our lives are we willing to share with those whom we consider friends.
- Recent reports say that Facebook may have hit its peak. The number of people using Facebook has dropped in the UK for the last two months. And the number of Facebook users in the US who logged into their account in the month of May fell from 155.2 million to 149.4 million at the start of June.
While Facebook statistics indicate that the average user has 130 friends, most active users have hundreds more. For many, their collection of friends includes: family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, fans, etc. I’m left with the hypothesis that many Facebook users have hit their friend capacity. So do we take on the task of self-selecting our list of 150 friends? Or are we beginning to see people abandon Facebook due to information overload?
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