In relying solely on social media to “keep in touch” with people you no longer see on a day-to-day basis, you degrade your friendships. People accrue “friends” and “followers” as if their life were worthy of first-class stalking from paid paparazzi. It is pitiful and arrogant — an excellent picture of the modern narcissist.
You got accepted to graduate school, found out you’re moving, misplaced your car keys once again, spilt a cup of coffee on your laptop or are very excited about some trivial happenstance of your day. Status update. Tweet. Share. Tag. Big news or random thought, everyone must know.
You don’t reach for your phone to call your best friend. You post it on the Internet. How can this possibly compare to a heartfelt letter, a long awaited envelope with pictures from an event you missed or a voicemail message left by a friend you haven’t spoken with in several months? It can’t.
As people follow, friend, like, re-tweet and comment, they fail to see the sad irony. How many of these people would take the time to call, write you a letter or even remember it was your birthday? Perhaps you don’t care, but these relationships are superficial, threaded along by a virtual wire that leads to an abundance of meaningless relationships. You have an overwhelming cadre of adoring ‘fans,’ none of whom call, check up on you or initiate a conversation when it requires any more effort than connecting their smartphone to the nearest WiFi access.
Social media might have its perks, but using it as the primary form of communication or relationship maintenance is utterly degrading. It lessens the intensity, erases the intimacy and reduces the joys one can receive from a friendship. It is widely accessible, fully public and oftentimes limited in length. Is this truly what you desire your “friendships” to be—visible to everyone, efficient and controlled by a character count?
There seems to be a trend toward keeping in touch via blogs post-graduation. Sure, that’s convenient for the blogger, but if a friendship only merits a post that anyone with an IP address can view, scrolling updates focused on that person’s life or generic quips and random thoughts they muse throughout the day, then friendship is being redefined.
Feel free to tell everyone your thoughts or let them inside the pages of your mind. Perhaps you browse the chronicles of your friends’ lives as well. Still, the interaction, the conversing of ideas, exchanging of sympathies, laughter and excitement from sharing experiences with a friend disappear. Deeply personal two-way communication doesn’t live on the pages of a blog post. If you’re so busy that you can’t call and update a friend on your life or keep in touch on a personal level, then perhaps you should be a celebrity.
If you’re that busy, then maybe having thousands of “followers” and “friends” who constantly look at your updates and offer you a mass of one-sided, generic impersonal relationships is preferable. After all, friendships require time, effort and sacrifice, but Twitter and Facebook weren’t designed to require these of you.
