Many of us may have lists of contacts and followers¹ on social media networks that extend into the thousands, but new research has found we may actually only have five real friends. 

 

我们中的许多人通讯录里的联系人和社交媒体网络上的好友可以增加到数千人，但是新研究指出，事实上我们拥有的真正意义上的朋友可能只有5个。

 

A team of scientists have found that while humans have the capacity to form complex layered societies, we face an upper limit to how many friends we can have in our inner circle. 

 

They say this upper limit of five has likely gone unchanged for hundreds of thousands of years and probably governed social relationships when humans lived as groups of hunters. 

 

Whenever we add someone new to our social network, they argue, each new friend is actually slightly more distant than those of the inner circle. 

 

It suggests that while we may have just a few friends, we can still surround ourselves with acquaintances. 

 

Michael Harré and Mikhail Prokopenko, both with the University of Sydney in Australia, said while we may only have five close friends, our social network from them can extend to 132 people. 

 

The researchers built computer models to analyse human social networks and then compared them to hunter-gatherer societies. 

 

They explain that from an evolutionary² perspective, it was important to have small groups of close-knit social connections when humans were on hunting expeditions and other dangerous stations. 

 

This would mean that we did not have to be as close with the rest of the wider group - as long as we had a strong bond with around 5 others. 

 

Even now, as we add or follow others on social media, most new connections are made through meeting friends of others.

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