Online frenzy for friends
How many friends can one person manage? And are social networking sites such as Facebook, with individual online tallies of 500-plus friends, pushing the boundaries of friendship?
The first answer is 150 maximum, says Robin Dunbar, an Oxford University evolutionary anthropologist.
It was all the human mind was capable of handling and this even applied to the current Facebook generation when online, he told the University of Oxford reviewers of his book How Many Friends Does One Person Need?
Our evolutionary history still had an impact on modern friendships, he told the reviewers, as did our brain capacity.
The volume of the neocortex region of our brain, used for language and thought, limited the number of friends we could maintain, along with the spare time we had.
Any greater than 150 and the quality of the relationships deteriorated as the social group widened, both on the web and in real life.
Professor Dunbar told the reviewers he defined "friends" as those you had a relationship with based on trust and were likely to say "yes" when asked for a favour.
But beyond this, borderline friends, classified in the "weaker-tie" group, can still bring significant benefits to a person, reports New Scientist.
Research by sociologist Mark Granovetter, carried out in the 1970s before internet use, showed loose acquaintances with similar interests or friends-of-friends provided information that enabled a significant number of people to get their jobs.
Professor Dunbar told New Scientist that while real friendships were still today most often made in person, social networking sites did help maintain them.
