According to a British anthropologist named Dunbar the maximum amount of social relations a human can maintain is around 150. This is because maintaining these social relationships takes time and commitment not only from you but also the other person. Memory also plays a huge role in this as you have to remember a great amount of detail about the person from little things like their name, hobbies, and favorite songs to what makes them angry, who they don't like and who their friends are. One of the binding roles in maintaining friendships is support and we only have so much emotional support to give out. Now just after listing a few variables to a friendship How many friends do you think you have?
Dunbar's magic number of 150 is more common than you think as in the hunter and gatherer days tribes consisted of around 150, in The Doomsday Book pointed out that there was an average size of an English village was around 150, and the average number of wedding guest is around 141.
https://www.sketchplanations.com/post/178356259078/dunbars-number-150-the-evolutionary
Now close friends are a completely different category has the limit here is about five this includes intimate relationships. A study in Europe found that for the average european 80% of all their calls where made to the same four people. Is this true for you? I just checked and it holds true for me.
Having friends on social media means absolutely nothing there just numbers on a screen. Go through your friends list and see how many people you constantly talk with. Most likely you have only seen the majority of them once if even that and you will probably never see them again. None of these "friends" on social media actually count as friends, sorry to disappoint you. You can't count them as a friend unless you talk to them on a day to day biases and you both can rely on each other in times of need.
Now if you're doubting many of your friendships this far in there's more bad news to come as statistically half of your friends don't actually like you. A study at MIT had 84 participants with so called "friends" asked them and their friends to rank each other on a scale of zero (I don't know this person) to five (their my best friend). 94% of people expected their friendships to be reciprocated BUT only 53% of them were. So half of the participants who were supposed to be a friend actually didn't see the participant as a friend at all. As the sample size does seem small there has been countless of other studies with over 92,000 participants have concluded the the respiratory rate of friendship ranged from an astonishing 34% to 53%.
To end on a happy note you could cut off half of your friends and probably be happier. Now to figure out which friends to cut off is the hard part as there is no perfect way of know but a good way to tell is if they have shared a secret with you. Because sharing a secret with someone requires a great amount of trust and would only do with someone they truly admire and respect as a friend. Now if your with a group and they ask you to take the picture im sorry pal but i think it might be you.
Creating friendships allowed us to thrive throughout time, protect each other, look after our sick. So I ask you this when you and your best friend are together are you greater than your sum parts can you forge great memories accomplish amazing things, will you be there for oneonther in times of need if not they might be on the negative side of your 50%.
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