Buzz
Think about your inner circle—the friends you reach out to every day, the ones you trust with your deepest secrets, or the ones you text at 2 a.m. when you need a favor or emotional support. How many names come to mind? One? Three? Maybe eight? If you're like most people, your answer is probably somewhere between three and five. (It turns out, the TV show Friends got it just right.)
As Lifehacker explains, British anthropologist Dr. Robin Dunbar was the first to discover that humans can realistically only maintain meaningful relationships with an average of 148 people over the course of their lives. The brain can only process so much social information, and a circle of around 150 people—friends, family, and acquaintances—appears to be the upper limit. This might help explain why comedian Tom Segura’s bit about not having the energy to meet new people resonated so well during his 2014 Netflix special Completely Normal filmed in Minneapolis. He joked, “Next time you’re at a bar or out walking around and someone says, ‘Hey, man,’ just say, ‘Nope. I’m all friended up.’”
Dunbar's research continued, and in 2016, he and two colleagues identified distinct “layers of friends” within the larger network of 150 relationships. The team analyzed mobile phone data, using the frequency of calls to measure the closeness of relationships. They discovered that as the number of friends in any given layer increases, the emotional depth of those bonds decreases. The innermost layer typically holds three to five of your closest friends, the next layer adds 10 more—bringing the total to 15. The third layer includes 35 additional people, while the final layer consists of another 100.
You might be surprised to discover that the composition of these layers doesn’t vary much between introverts and extroverts, despite extroverts typically having a larger circle of friends. So, if you have three to five truly close friends, you're right where you should be.
