ResourceBlog Article: Brains Can’t Handle All Our Facebook Friends, Can Manage 150 Friends Max

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Sunday, 24th January 2010

Brains Can’t Handle All Our Facebook Friends, Can Manage 150 Friends Max

From the Article:

We may be able to amass 5,000 friends on Facebook but humans’ brains are capable of managing a maximum of only 150 friendships, a study has found.

Robin Dunbar, professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University, has conducted research revealing that while social networking sites allow us to maintain more relationships, the number of meaningful friendships is the same as it has been throughout history.

Dunbar developed a theory known as “Dunbar’s number” in the 1990s which claimed that the size of our neocortex — the part of the brain used for conscious thought and language — limits us to managing social circles of around 150 friends, no matter how sociable we are.

These are relationships in which a person knows how each friend relates to every other friend. They are people you care about and contact at least once a year.

Source: The Times of London

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