Human relationships used to be easy: you had friends, boy- or girlfriends, parents, children, and landlords. Now, thanks to social media, it’s all gone sideways. — Susan Orlean
HOW MUCH TIME each day do you spend on social media interacting with “friends”? Do you have hundreds of these friends, or just a few, and what do you make of them?
According to a 2014 Pew Research study, the average Facebook user has 338 online friends. Add to that your friends on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ and Pinterest, to name just a few more networks, and that’s a lot of people to keep track of. Way more than we’re capable of tracking, according to Robin Dunbar, a University of Oxford professor who, in researching how primates and homo sapiens act in groups, discovered that we can maintain relationships with a maximum number of 150 people at any one time. Continued research into how and with whom people interact online has confirmed that number.
150 people is still a lot to my mind.
So, we have these social networks that help us keep track of people we might otherwise lose track of — college and high school friends, cousins and aunts and uncles, and so on — but can we truly become friends with someone we’ve never met in person? According to Dunbar, the answer is no.
And yet many of us spend hours each day browsing social networks, reading about our friends’ new jobs, vacations, political views, the antics of their dogs and cats and babies, and what they had for lunch.
Another researcher, Nicole Ellison, an associate professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Information, found that people who asked for advice or favors online — I’m visiting a new city, what should I see while I’m there? What restaurants do you recommend? Do you know any good dentists in my area? — reported a stronger sense of social connection than those who didn’t. So social network relationships had more meaning for those who actively used the sites.
Perhaps the very meaning of friendship and human interaction is changing due to these online connections.
What do you think? Journaling about your feelings, responses, and ideas related to your social networks can help clarify the meaning and purpose of these types of relationships in your life. Following are a few prompts to get you started.
Journaling Prompts
- In general, in what ways does social media enhance and/or detract from your relationships?
– - What kinds of relationships do you have with your social media friends? And who do you interact most with online?
– - Who in your networks do you a consider as true friends? Do you connect with them outside the networks? If so, what are those connections?
– - What meaning does social networking have in your life? And what benefits does it provide to you?
– - Do you think that social connections are becoming more shallow as a result of technology? Explain your answer.
– - What kinds of personal experiences do you share with your social media friends, and what feedback do you receive? How does this kind of sharing and feedback feel to you?
– - If you pared your social media friends down to just those you really care about, how many would be people you also know offline and how many would be people you only know online? How would you go about that “paring down” process?
– - Perform a creative cluster using the words “Facebook Friends” as the nucleus. (If you prefer, use a different network such as Twitter or Instagram.) Write a poem using words and phrases from the resulting creative cluster.
Share your thoughts about social media friendships and your responses to some of these journaling prompts — or your creative cluster poem — in the comments section below.
I was very hesitant to become involved with social media. Despite some of the awful things some family members have directed towards me via Facebook, I remain grateful for social media. As in personal interactions, I can not control what other people say or do. But I can control my response to those negative messages, etc., that come across Facebook. I choose not to let those comments cut at me–just like I don’t give people permission to make me feel inferior in one-on-one encounters. As with any relationship, I’ve come to recognize that people are complex and bring a host of unseen issues and baggage into the social media realm. Yet. I’ve made many friends via Facebook and enjoy the interaction with people I’ve never met in person. Those new contacts and budding relationships remain positive and are a great source of joy. I appreciate your prompts as I reflect upon my continued use of social media for both personal and professional interactions.
Thank you, Sara, for your candid response. I (like many of us, I suspect) have a mixed relationship with social media. Truth is, I don’t’ really spend all that much time on it. I abandoned Twitter a while back and have limited myself to mostly professional interactions on Facebook. Pinterest never really grabbed me, and I don’t do Instagram, even though I know it’s popular. I do love interacting with other writers on social media, reading their blogs, and hearing about their processes and achievements. And I’ve been able to connect with people I might not otherwise connect with on a regular basis. So there are advantages and disadvantages. Like any kind of relationship, the more you put into it, the more you get out of it.