Friends vs. Facebook "Friends"

When social media first hit the scene in a big way, we had no idea the possible challenges that would come along with connecting to everyone we would meet; we just thought it was fun and exciting to collect friends and interact in a virtual space, not to mention stay connected as our lives naturally diverged from one another. However, as time has pressed on, social media is presenting social challenges (and opportunities!) that no one could have predicted when current popular platforms were in their infancy.

Shifting focus specifically to Facebook, the platform has some definite benefits - it provides a multifaceted venue to connect with current friends, while also providing us with a window to peer into the lives of those who we used to know, even if we only knew them for a very brief time. There’s no longer a need to sever ties, as Facebook allows us to feel connected with little to no actual personal relationship maintenance. Yet, with no personal relationship management, how is peering into the lives of acquaintances impacting the way we feel about ourselves? I have reflected on this question over nearly the last year and a half I have gone with a deactivated personal Facebook account, and  though my experience is unique to me, others may have experiences similar my own, which is why I’ve chosen to write about my journey and explain why my “friend” count on Facebook will plummet when I return to Facebook.

Before the days of remaining Facebook “friends” indefinitely, people made an effort to stay in contact, they ventured out, visited one another, they wrote letters and more if they wanted to nurture the relationship. While focusing on specific relationships, they lost touch with other people who had floated into, then subsequently out of their lives. It didn’t mean individuals didn’t care about the people with whom they lost touch, it was not one person’s fault they lost touch (or maybe it was, I’ll touch on this in another blog down the road), relationships simply faded away after priorities, jobs, and geographic locations changed. Before Facebook we were allowed to lose touch without anxiety or hurt feelings on either end. However, with Facebook, we are expected to remain “in contact” with anyone and everyone we have ever met ever, which is overwhelming and can carry personal and interpersonal consequences.

The impetus for deactivating my Facebook account stemmed from the unintentional pressures I felt while on Facebook from “friends” with whom I rarely, if ever, interacted with after our paths diverged. My Facebook feed was littered with stories including marriages, trips, growing families, and more, which was exciting news that I was eager to see from family members and close friends. However, I was seeing updates from a multitude of people I went to high school or college with and no longer have a relationship with, which when compounded one upon another made me feel somehow left out and caused me to perceive terrible shortcomings in myself, even though I should not have been ashamed or sad when reflecting on my own accomplishments - since graduating high school I have lived in a total of six states, including living in the two largest cities in the United States, I obtained a master’s degree, and am well on the way to a career I can be proud of. Hopefully, someday family will be in the cards, but for now I’m happy with what I’ve accomplished and I’ve done just fine on my own. Even considering my accomplishments, the social pressures I encountered on Facebook made me feel entirely bad about myself, so in October 2012 I deactivated my account.

Now that I’m faced with reactivating my personal Facebook account in order to maintain relationships with my close friends and see photos of their children, I am forced to reflect on the reasons why I deactivated in the first place and consider new reasoning for whom I should be allow to be my Facebook friend in order to avoid undue social pressures.

As I see it, there are six primary reasons we accept and remain “friends” with people on Facebook – some of them well intentioned and others not so well intentioned

1. The person is a member of your family or a close friend
The best reason to be “friends” with someone on Facebook is because you are actually connected to the person in real life. As a family member or a close personal friend, you have a vested interest in the course of the other person’s life and your relationship will withstand the test of distance and differing life goals. Whether you connect online or in person, you make them a priority, and these people should remain your friends.

2. We genuinely like the other person and consider them a friend, though they are not a close friend who knows us or has known us well in the past

Likely the primary reasons to remain “friends” with someone on Facebook is that the platform allows people to passively stay in touch should their paths ever cross again. As we go through life we collect these “friends” and we feel badly clicking a little box that says “unfriend” if we wish the person on the other end no ill will. What will they think of us? It is safer to simply allow the person to remain our “friend” even if we don’t talk and the information they post is irrelevant to our lives.

3. We live vicariously through the other person

The person you are connected with travels while you stay close to home or they are single and date a litany of people while you are faithfully married, or any other host of topics make you different and their life is interesting to you and you live vicariously through their posts and photos.

4. We feel badly unfriending someone, though we don't really know them

This is a silly reason, but a valid one. For some reason, some people seem to go through the rotary of every person they have ever met in their lives ever and request them to be their virtual “friend.” For whatever reason, we feel badly unfriending people, even if they are not our friend or barely an acquaintance. 

5. We think the person we are "friends" with is a train wreck

On the flipside of the above reason, this is a genuinely awful reason to stay connected to someone on Facebook, but many of us have done it. You know that one person who posts things so out of your realm of ordinary or acceptable that the content they post blows your mind just a little bit every time. For example, they are excited that their boyfriend just got out of prison, they post cursing rants at the parking authority every other day, or they are getting married for the fourth time in three years. Whatever this person is doing, their life makes us feel just a little bit better about our own, so why not remain “friends” so every once in a while you can take a peek and breathe a sigh of relief? It’s not right. In fact, it’s totally wrong, but people do it. Confession time… I’ve done it.

6. Facebook provides us with the latest gossip

It is human nature to want to be in the know. Facebook allows us to peer into the lives of people we were connected with in the past and gather only the information we want, “She gained weight since high school.” “She had a baby, I saw the photos on Facebook.” “I think so-and-so got divorced, her name changed when she was married and now it’s back to what it used to be!” If you can’t tell, gossip triggered on Facebook often surrounds women and isn’t necessarily fair.  

Of the reasons listed above, only reasons 1-3 are remotely valid and I have made the decision, that from this point onward, though it may not be popular, I’m going to make Facebook friendship decisions based on reason number 1. It hurts me to seemingly sever ties with people I care about among the other categories, but it is important for me to be vigilant in my efforts to maintain close friendships while also maintaining my own sanity. 

I apologize if you look at your friend feed and I’m no longer a part of it – you really shouldn’t miss me too much since I haven’t been a part of any Facebook feed for nearly year. However, if you notice, please do not take it as a slight. If we haven’t spoken since we graduated high school together or since we sat next to each other in that class in college, it may be time that we stop creeper stalking each other until our paths cross again – and I hope that they will! However, if we do interact in real life or online about shared interests and life, of course I hope we will remain friends – on and off of Facebook.

For those individuals who are in parallel industries including education and technology fields, I also have a professional social media presence where I engage in discussions about work and projects I'm excited about, along with posting content that is relevant to the lives of the students I work with and I am happy to connect with you on a professional level there.

For those who say, “Well how can we contact one another if we ever want to?” The answer to that is simple – Linkedin, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, other less invasive forms of social media where only information we are comfortable sharing with the general public exists and every aspect of our lives is not intimately on display for all to see, or we could exchange email addresses or phone numbers. I am very open to interacting with people from my past, but I think it is healthier in the absence of a genuine intentional friendship for boundaries to exist to avoid peering into the lives of one another.