5,642 Facebook friends?

Sociable readers, tweet this: My close friends max out at 150.

No, I’m not talking about character space for those microblogs. I mean real, true friends — you can’t have more than 150 of them.

Here, I’ll go first to make you seem less cruel and heartless. (I have to confess here because my idea of Facebook is burying my introverted head in a hardbound book.)

I, Paige Henry, admit in this article that I have less than 150 friends.

Why this number? Well, some years ago a British anthropologist by the name of Robin Dunbar published an article theorizing that a primate’s neocortex size is directly related to its species’ general population of social groups.

For us humans, Dunbar’s number is said to fall somewhere between 100 and 230, but the “mean group size” is said to be 147.8, which is then rounded up to the magical 150.

This number is regarded as how many relatively close relationships our brains can maintain in a practical manner, and despite common misconceptions, it seems to be true.

Even Facebook fits into the formula. Their statistics state that 500 million people actively use the site, yet the average has 130 friends.

The Wall Street Journal says the number 150 has corresponded to our social groups for centuries: “The length of address books, the size of hunter-gatherer bands, the population of neolithic villages and the strength of army units” all typically add up to 150.

So those of you boasting 300, 500, 1,000 friends or more — who are you kidding?

We all know who our actual, best and dearest friends are; yet we’re claiming to be “friends” with people we don’t even talk to, let alone see.

I know Facebook is a great tool for connecting with lost buddies and staying in touch with those we do care about, but maybe we should be honest and tweeze out those filler-friends.

Deleting false friends (false acquaintances, really) doesn’t need to be viewed as murder. No one is going to die from a simple, polite “de-friend.”

Maybe the Lenten season should promote this kind of purity purge, an abstinence from weak social ties.

In an online interview from 2008, Dunbar elaborated on his number 150, saying that it’s just “one in a series of circles.”

At our social core there are about five best friends; the next ring houses around 15, then 50, and finally 150 for quality relationships.

We should be proudest of the people we know intimately. It seems to me that having a strong base of five friends is better than an army of strangers.

An individual’s worth and “likeability” don’t belong in a numbers game measured by arbitrary buddies.

As always, it’s about quality, not quantity.


E-mail: paihenry@indiana.edu