This is Why You Can’t Send a Friend Request to Someone on Facebook

Facebook is still among the most popular and widely used social media networks worldwide, quite possibly due to the way one could effortlessly connect with friends and family on this platform, as well as communicate and share loving memories with them.

However, sometimes you might have issues when attempting to send a friend request to someone on Facebook, and you might be wondering why this is happening. Here are some explanations:

Your request hasn’t yet been accepted

In case you’ve already sent a friend request to someone on Facebook, you won’t have the ability to send another one until they respond. Keep in mind that it might take a while for some people to accept your request. In the meantime, you can check whether the request you sent is pending.

Specific friend request settings

Another reason why you can’t add a user as a friend on Facebook might be the fact that either you or the person you’re trying to add has configured your settings to only be able to receive friend requests from people with whom you already have mutual friends.

If this is the case, you could ask the person in question to change their settings or to add you as a friend, or you might wish to change your own configurations by going to Settings>Privacy.

The person has reached the friend limit

Facebook only allows a single personal account to have a maximum of 5,000 friends. This means that if the person you are trying to add has already reached the limit, you won’t be able to send another friend request. The same applies to you, in case you’ve reached the 5,000 friend limit.

If you wish to connect with a larger number of people after reaching the friend limit, you could always consider changing your personal account to a Facebook Page

If you want to keep up with someone who has reached a friend limit, click on the Follow option on their page, in order to be able to see all of their posts that are set to public on your Feed.

A blocking issue

Facebook also has a Blocking feature that allows people to completely remove others from their Facebook interactions. This means that if you’ve previously blocked someone, you won’t have the opportunity to send them a friend request until you unblock them. On the other hand, if another person has blocked you, you will first need to ask them to unblock you through a different medium other than Facebook, in order to add them as a friend.

Alternatively, Facebook might have also blocked you from sending additional friend requests. This might happen when you already add plenty of friends, when any previous requests didn’t get a response, or when your previous requests were labeled as unwanted. However, this issue should sort itself out after a short break, usually a couple of days.

Hopefully, one of the reasons described above will help you realize why you are unable to add people as friends on Facebook. If none of these solutions managed to resolve your issue, however, then it might be a good idea to contact Facebook’s customer support for additional help.