Women have more ‘genuine’ friends than men on FB.
By Sreejith Vallikunnu
People cannot have more than 200 ‘genuine’ friends on social media site Facebook, according to a new study.
The study conducted by the University of Oxford also claims that women have more genuine friends than men on Facebook.
Researchers lead by psychologist professor Robin Dunbar conducted two surveys among 3,300 people to see whether using the social media really means we can have more friends.
Their earlier research has revealed that there is a limit to how many friends a human can have.
This is because our brain’s ability to process multiple relationships creates a natural group size of 100-200 people, which is called the Social Brain Hypothesis.
The studies found that even among regular social media users, the average number of close friends they had on Facebook was 155 in the first survey and 183 in the second, right in the bracket predicted by the Social Brain Hypothesis.
In the first sample, women averaged 166 and men just 145 friends; in the second, it was 196 vs 157, while older generations had fewer friends than younger ones.
The first survey group, made up of regular social media users, considered only 28 percent of their Facebook friends to be close friends.
Robin Dunbar said: “Social media certainly help to slow down the natural rate of decay in relationship quality that would set in once we cannot readily 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.â€
“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.
The findings were published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.