Anyone who has ever used social media, particularly Facebook, knows what friending is. In fact, the social media phenomenon has given us a whole new lexicon of exciting new terms that serve to confuse many if not most of us.
A few short years ago if you mentioned that you were tweeting, the people around you would have asked you to leave the room. We knew that you could befriend a person whom you had met, but friending them online hadn’t even been invented. And liking something was a matter of personal taste that remained pretty much a personal matter, not an online social media voting process.
But now, with the miracle of Facebook and Twitter—to limit this discussion to just those two, even though there are a lot more—we can tweet away to our heart’s content. Apparently even the most mundane, personal and boring topics are fair game for Twitter followers (I call them tweeters). We show our appreciation of something by “liking” it on Facebook. And we can go about friending thousands of people if we so choose, regardless of whether we’ve ever met them, or even know them for that matter. Indeed lots of Facebook users boast hundreds—and in some cases thousands—of friends.
Within the realm of Facebook devotees, that’s probably an impressive number. But is it realistic? In other words, are those folks really friends, or are they just people you’ve met. Oh and by the way, since this is social media that we’re talking about, meeting someone doesn’t even have to happen in person. Social media friending often happens sight unseen, where somebody sends an electronic friend request to someone else online, it’s accepted, and an online friendship blossoms.
Of course, many times that online friendship is little more than a number on someone’s Facebook page, and, in the real world at least, would hardly be considered a friendship. It would be similar to me collecting all of the business cards I’ve collected from people that I’ve met over the years (thousands) and calling them all friends. This by the way would be a bit different from reality where maybe 10 or 20 of those people—certainly no more than that—could be considered to be true friends.
My point here is that friending someone on a social media platform like Facebook is an electronic statement but not necessarily a real, live friendship. As far as I’m concerned, meeting face to face can only form those.
Unfortunately, meeting people face to face is starting to seem like an outdated concept these days. Folks are spending more and more time online, hunkered down behind their big screens and familiar keyboards, and less and less time out and about, meeting other people in person. For the record, I think that’s a shame. Having a relationship with your keyboard and monitor just isn’t the same as interacting with another human being.
It’s a trend that—in my opinion, anyway—needs to be reversed. I’ve recently been seeing a growing number of articles indicating that class reunions between old schoolmates are on the decline because fewer and fewer people want to attend them. The general consensus seems to be that going to a reunion in person is an unnecessary step when you can simply boot up, log on, and plug into your favorite social media site. I think that this trend is not only sad, but it’s dangerous as well.
We need to socialize with live people, in person, in order to satisfy our real need for human contact. It’s what human beings are meant to do, and it’s how we grow and evolve. Socializing online doesn’t fill that need, even if it is easier and cheaper to do.
Granted, formal class reunions can be a pain. They tend to be expensive and often inconvenient. Depending on who comes—and who doesn’t—sometimes they’re not even all that much fun. But this doesn’t mean that we don’t need to get together. It simply means that maybe there’s a better way to do it.
There is. I’m a huge fan of the new trend towards mini reunions. They are easy to set up, easy to conduct, and fun to attend. You can hold them anywhere, anytime, as often as you want. It’s a perfect way to reconnect with old schoolmates who you might not see in the course of your day-to-day life, but who you’d really like to circle back with.
We all like to spend time with our friends. That’s what human relationships are all about. But it’s also nice to see people that our lives were intertwined with long ago. That’s a lot of fun, and just as important for our species.
My advice is simple—get out and meet people. Your computer isn’t the medium, it’s the tool. Search online for people you once knew, and reach out to them. Then go meet them. Whether it’s a quick drink or a fine dinner, a walk in the park or a game of golf, go do it. Have your own mini reunions, and have lots of them.
You’ll really be glad that you did.
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