Average Facebook user doesn't know a fifth of friends

By

Anna Leach

on January 13, 2011

If you've ever gone through your 300 friends and been baffled by why you're friends with someone called Barry whose face you don't recognise, you're not alone. The average Facebook user doesn't know a fifth of their friends. So if you've got 500 of them that's a whopping 100 people that can access your profile that you don't actually know.

The research from GoodMobilePhones surveyed over 1,522 Facebook users and found out the slightly worrying statistic.

20% seems to be a bit of a magic number as far as Facebook friends are concerned - that's also the percentage of Facebook friends that people regularly talk to and interact with.

So it's a bit like this:
One fifth of your Facebook friends are your Real Friends
Three fifths of your Facebook friends are acquaintances you know but don't really talk to
One fifth are people you can't frigging remember.

The main reason people gave for being friends with people they didn't know was politeness (54%) and then the desire to look more popular by having more friends (34%). I understand both those reasons.

I must admit, it has got easier to place random people now with Facebook's new Friendship pages - you can see mutual friends, the date you added them and events you've both attended - which could all serve to jog your memory.