Where Did All My Friends Go?

Growing up, I remember being told by my mom to enjoy the time I had with my friends while we still went to the same school because after high school we would most likely disconnect. Little did she know the idea of ‘temporary’ friendships would be no more, or that the structure of friendships would change drastically with the rise of social media.

I didn’t join Instagram or Facebook until my senior year of high school. As soon as I hopped on the trend, I followed all my close friends, my classmates, and their friends. My Instagram feed was a mix of people I was friends with and people I only knew virtually.

Eventually, I’d come across the profile of my crush from second grade, which led to me finding (and following) old friends from my days back in elementary and middle school.

Through social media, I was given access to a window from which I could see what goes on in their personal lives. I can comment on their birthday posts and congratulate them on their college acceptances. I always felt up-to-date with their lives without exchanging any real form of communication. Our interactions were diminished to likes and comments on posts that we mindlessly absorbed.

Every now and then my comment section would have a “Miss you, we need to catch up sometime,” or something of that nature. And every time I responded with “Miss you too, let’s plan something soon.”

Never have we followed through with those plans. It’s not to say that either of us is a “bad friend,” we’re barely friends at all.

Friendships are not easy to maintain in real life (IRL), especially with many things going on in the day-to-day. People get too busy to grab a cup of coffee or attend parties. Living in the 21st century, everyone seems too busy to be social in-person. So it probably should not be a surprise that a study by Cigna found that the younger generation of Americans, from ages 18 to 22, are lonely. They also found that only about half of Americans have meaningful in-person social interactions like spending time with family or holding a conversation with a close friend.

With social media being in our grasp at any time of the day, it’s understandable that some might think we’re being more social by adding hundreds of people to our list of friends. It is called social media, after all, which leaves the impression that the more people we have on our friends list means we actually have more friends.

The thing is digital and IRL friends are nurtured very differently. On one hand, in-real-life friendships require more time and effort whereas virtual friendships require less emotional commitment.Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said it best in an article for the New York Times.

“You can have your friendships at the temperature you want them - not too close, not too distant, just right,” Turkle said of virtual friendships. “And when you want to end things, it can usually happen without penalty from family or community.”

On the other hand, making time for IRL friends requires scheduling, constant back-and-forth and clear communication. But people today are too busy to do all of that. In an essay written for the New York Times, Tim Kreider writes about how this generation is constantly busy; too busy to make time for friends.

“They schedule in time with friends the way students with 4.0 G.P.A.’s make sure to sign up for community service because it looks good on their college applications,” Kreider said.

So if we are too busy to make connections with people IRL, the next alternative is to form bonds over the World Wide Web.

Evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar found that it is impossible for some to be friends, emotional bonds and all, with more than 150 people. Some have argued his findings, while others have wondered since social media has connected us to so many more people over the years, shouldn’t that number be far greater?

“Yes, I can find out what you had for breakfast from your tweet, but can I really get to know you better?” Dunbar said. “These digital developments help us keep in touch when in the past a relationship might just have died; but in the end, we actually have to get together to make a relationship work.”

Dunbar said that Facebook has not made us friends with the people we follow. It has simply allowed us to keep them from completely disappearing from our lives.

However, what makes a true friendship is shared experience and that requires more than just sharing memes online. While the Internet helps to keep people from different periods of your life connected, it does not substitute for IRL friendship, and the real work requires us to maintain the actual bonds of friendship by staying connected IRL.