What is a good number of friends?

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The friendship blog says this:
British anthropologist Professor Robin Dunbar has conducted research that concludes that humans are functionally hard-wired to handle a maximum of 150 friends at a time. That number, 150, has been dubbed Dunbar’s Number. The term was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, The Tipping Point and has been cited recently in a spate of news articles.
http://www.thefriendshipblog.com/tags/number-friends

ABC:
The poll, conducted Dec. 11-14, finds that, on average, Americans have nine "close friends" (a mean of 8.6), not including their relatives. This includes 45% of Americans who say they have six or more close friends, 39% who have between three and five close friends, and 14% who have one or two close friends. Only 2% of Americans say they have no close friends. The current average represents a slightly lower number of close friends than reported in 1990 and 2001, when Americans said they had an average of 10 friends (means of 9.9 and 9.5, respectively).
http://www.gallup.com/poll/10891/americ ... ships.aspx

BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7920434.stm
The average number is about 150, says leading anthropologist Robin Dunbar.

It may sound like a lot, but think of your Christmas card list - 50 cards to 50 couples = 100 friends.

"It's the number of people that you know as persons and you know how they fit into your social world and they know how you fit into theirs. They are a group of people to which you have an obligation of friendship."

They usually consist of an inner circle of five "core" people and an additional layer of 10, he says. That makes 15 people - some will probably be family members - who are your central group and then outside that, there's another 35 in the next circle and another 100 on the outside. And that's one person's social world.

Wiki:
According to a study documented in the June 2006 issue of the journal American Sociological Review, Americans are thought to be suffering a loss in the quality and quantity of close friendships since at least 1985.[1][2] The study states 25% of Americans have no close confidants, and the average total number of confidants per citizen has dropped from four to two.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship ... in_the_U.S.

I'm not sure how to define, "friend."

There are people that I socialize with--maybe a dozen who come in and out of a regular circle who meet up once a week (we game together, so the group has a framework). Of these, I think there are 2 or 3 that I would be comfortable calling and going to a movie with (for example).

There are people who are involved in my hobbies (particularly community theatre), but I am really working with them, not socializing, per se.

There are people that I know online--but they could be Turing machines, for all I know!

It's more likely that people have 150 acquaintances. Wouldn't you think that friends spend a significant amount of time together - I certainly would. For someone to manage social time with 150 people and have a job, go to college, etc... sounds impossible. From experience, it seems people have on average 5-10 close friends, and 20-50 casual friends they might go out for coffee, etc... with once in a while.

That being said, many people have different definitions of friends, and there is always going to be inconsistency in what a "good" number of friends is because friend is an ambiguous term.

There are approx. 3.5 people I would call close friends..and that I am usually comfortable around.
I do have a number of long-time acquaintances though.

There are people who can handle having 150 friends?!

Don't worry about number, quality is more important.

There's no way. These people do not have 150 friends. That's too many to keep track of.
This may be this definition:

This is the sense used in "a friend of a friend".

Clearly, the Americans and British are using the word in completely different senses. This comparison is therefore invalid.

Ironic that 150 figure.

Even NTs say you are lucky if you need more than one hand to count the total number of REAL friends you have had in your lifetime.

Why is 150 ironic?

The truth is if you are not happy than getting more friends won't solve you problem.

The Dunbar Number is misleading. It is actually more about the small world phenomenon rather how many close friends people have. It is also far from being natural law. I would wager it is already out of date too.

I am happy with two/three close. You can make yourself unhappy by trying to juggle friends you don't need.

i don't throw the word "friend" around loosely, so only a few fit my definition:

i have a total of 3 close friends. i am perfectly fine with this number, because these 3 are people who know and accept me, quirks and all, whom i know can be counted on at the end of the day.

I don't relate to that at all.

If I decide to send Xmas cards to "everyone", they go to:

1. Mom and her husband
2. Dad and his wife
3. aunt M.
4. my sister
5. friend who I haven't seen in a year
6. friend who I haven't seen in 20 years.
7. uncle D and his wife (both of whom I have seen/talked to ONCE in my life, but they were very neat people.)


That's it. My husband has a few family members and friends on his side, but I don't really have much connection to them, because they all live on another continent.

Most of the people on my list are people who I am out of touch with anyway, and speak to once a decade.

As far as "fitting into people's social world", I don't think I fit into anyone's, except a couple of people on that list. There are my kid's teachers, some of whom I like and some of whom I do not, but I certainly don't fit into their social world. There are a few that I would stop and chat with if I saw them in town, but most of them I wouldn't bug. Everyone else is a total stranger.


I realize that some people send Xmas cards to everyone they've ever had a five-minute chat with. I'd be sent to a loony bin if I tried to get a stranger's address so I could send them a Xmas card, but my MIL does that, and people seem to think that's just fine. If I did it, I think it would come across as creepy, because it's not naturally "me."

i have maybe 3 best friends? one is online, however. and one lives in a different country now, so we dont get to talk too much (but when we do, we can spill our guts out) the other thankfully goes to my school. so i really only have one whom i see on a daily basis.

Thanks for the information. It helps me.

I have 358 "friends" on facebook, but only around 5 of them are actually real friends.

I'm never sure where the line is between people I know, acquaintainces, and friends. For example, I have friendly "chats" with the cashiers in the food court on campus. Some of them even remember my name and the ones who make food remember what I always eat. It's all very warm and friendly and I get to practice my social skills but I think, officially, those folks aren't even in the "acquaintance" category but rather something more like "business relations."

Or, for another example, is my priest my friend? He's nice to me and tries to be kind, seems interested in my life. But if he weren't a priest, he'd probably never give me the time of day. He's being paid by the parish to be nice to me (and all the rest of us in the parish) so in a sense he's no more my "friend" than a psychologist would be.

I have a small handful of good friends online (hi, Alexis!) none of whom have I (yet) met in person. And I have one offline friend who is also my husband. He is NT but only has 2.5 friends (me, a guy he used to work with, and a "frienemy" he's had for years in a nasty passive-aggressive friendship that the two seem to have happily ignored the last several years) offline and lots of friends/acquaintances online, mostly in WoW. (He's physically disabled so doesn't get out of the house very much.)

And then I have some acquaintances -- people with whom I share a relationship but not one close enough that I feel safe calling it a true "friendship": a couple at church and a guy in some of my classes. Interestingly, my acquaintances are all from other countries.

And then there are some people who are probably acquaintances but I put them in a diffrent category in my mind because they are the fellow members of a writer's group that meets once a month so they are in the "club members" category because they are like acquaintances but we only socialize as part of the official group unlike the other people I know who are truly acquaintances or maybe friends-in-the-making is the word for it.

But it's all pretty complicated and I never feel like I know where I stand with most other people (my husband is the exception) because it's so hard for me to suss out the type of relationship we have and whether it's moving in a direction or has achieved its full potential where it's at.