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November 13, 2015
Q. Can you propose numbers and perhaps even a sort of formula for maintaining human friendships?
A. The magic number is about 150 for the natural size of social groups, according to University of Oxford's Robin Dunbar, as reported by Catherine deLange in New Scientist magazine. This number is even in the right ballpark for modern online groups. “Facebook allows up to 5,000 friends, but most users have between 150 and 250, although many of these will be acquaintances and some will be strangers.” Actually, people with more Facebook friends tend to have more in-person friends as well.
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