The Dunbar Number: The Real Limit to Your Social Life

The Architecture of Human Connection

The 150 figure isn’t arbitrary. Dunbar’s later research revealed layers of intimacy within that circle, each decreasing in closeness but increasing in size.

• 5: Your closest circle — family or lifelong confidants.

• 15: Good friends you trust deeply.

• 50: Friends you’d invite to a dinner or event.

• 150: Casual, but familiar — the people whose names and stories you actually remember.

Beyond that, relationships become superficial. Our brains simply can’t handle the emotional and cognitive load required to track everyone’s lives. The Dunbar Number represents the balance between connection and cognitive bandwidth.

Why Social Media Doesn’t Expand It

At first glance, digital platforms seem to challenge this theory. We can interact with thousands daily — likes, DMs, emojis. But Dunbar argues that interaction isn’t the same as connection. Online networks amplify communication, not intimacy.
In a 2016 Royal Society Open Science study, Dunbar analyzed Facebook data and found that while users averaged around 150 friends, they still only interacted meaningfully with a small subset — consistent with his original hypothesis. Technology may stretch our reach, but not our emotional capacity.

The Cost of Overconnection

Trying to maintain more relationships than our brains can handle comes at a price: emotional burnout and shallow social bonds. The pressure to keep up — birthdays, chats, updates — triggers social fatigue and, paradoxically, loneliness.
Sociologists call this the “connection paradox”: the more networks we build, the less depth we experience within them. Quality, not quantity, sustains psychological well-being.