This past Thursday I celebrated my one year friendaversary with a friend from California. We did so by having a movie night where we texted back and forth as the movie progressed. This was a regular weekend occurrence for a while(because who has anything better to do Friday/Saturday nights) and I never once thought it was strange that I never physically met this person before. We still joked around and laughed at the main characters as if we were there in the same room. We “met” through a mutual friend on Twitter one day and the conversation never seemed to die off. The platform for our communication shifted to Snapchat and then texting. For a “real” friendship to grow one needs to spend real, physical time with the other person, where as “virtual” friendships can grow by simply just tweeting more, liking more or texting more. The internet has made it so you don’t need to physically see people to feel close to them. The introduction of social media platforms has changed the “friendship playing field”.
I’ve met a few people I knew through Twitter at soccer games, and although our interactions might have been awkward at first(I mean, I was “there” when this person got their wisdom teeth removed and am “there” when they are mindlessly scrolling through their timeline while on the toilet) they soon seemed natural. Social Media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram have completely changed how we view our relationships with our friends. For the first time in our existence we can actually know what someone is doing at all times of the day, and this is a realization that we are still getting used to. In a way, Facebook has completely redefined the definition of a friend. I have more than a few “friends” on Facebook that I either never see or shared maybe a Psych 101 class Freshman year, and never talked to again— and I only have 500 friends. There are some people that seem to religiously like my photos or posts, and that is the only basis for our relationship. [Of course I, in turn, feel obligated to recopicarate their picture liking, even though I low-key don’t actually like it—shh]. I can’t imagine how it is for people with over 1000 such friends.
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Social media is just a way for us to present ourselves to the public. In “real” life, how we present ourselves might be based on what music we listen to, what clothes we wear, who we hang out with but notably, this isn’t much different online. Spotify has the option to share what music you’re listening to, and hashtags such as #SelfieSunday and #OOTD lets us show off our outfits to the Instagram world. The distinction in the online world is that the effort it takes to present ourselves in a certain way is much less. Now, we can do all of this without ever leaving our beds. Now, we can have full on conversations without the “pressure” of a physical conversation. Texting allows us to pause and think about what we want to say and how we want to say it. Imagine if somebody paused for a minute to think about how to perfectly phrase their answer to your “how’s your day” enquiry. Ironically on an online platform, it’s seen as against social norms to reply to a text the second you receive it, for fear of appearing needy. Infact, while writing this I overheard someone complaining about how quickly their professor responds to their emails.
I think it’s important for me to note that the purpose of this was not to compare “virtual” and “real” friends. I see the merits of both but simply wanted to highlight how social media has infact had an impact on how we interact with others.
