What is a Friend?

Many people have several hundred facebook friends, hundreds or even thousands of followers on twitter, linkedIn, and other social media websites. This makes you wonder, what these “friends,” “followers” or “connections” really are and what functions to they fulfill in our daily lives. What are friends? And can the interaction with virtual circles actually be a substitute for face-to-face friendships that we have in real life? And what does it mean for our society that we have so many “friends”?

As we all know, friends are generally selected individuals who we are in close personal contact with. They know us, care for us, understand us, and worry about us when something is wrong. They are people we trust. Often we share the same interests, having met them through a joint hobby or we come from the same home town having grown up together. We share the memories of fun times and remember other bad times when they were there for us and we needed them. Friends have each other’s backs. Where I come from (Germany), real friends are special. One doesn’t accumulate a whole lot of them during a lifetime, but the ones you make, you keep. Friends don’t include everyone you ever met during high school or during activities, but only a selected few who truly know you and who are worth spending time with. This may be different in other countries where the term is used much more inclusively. With these selected few, you try to stay in touch throughout your life via phone, email, facebook (if they are on it) and meet in person as much as possible, but with age, needs of the family, and growing physical distance it may be more and more difficult to see each other regularly. But when you are lucky enough to see them again, even after years, it still feels the same and surprisingly you pick up right where you left off. 

So how is it different with online friendships? Granted, many of the connections we have in social media are people from our childhood, adolescence, college, grad school or work. So we did spend real time with them at some point. But what about all those people who we don’t really know and still have in our platforms as friends, connections, followers? We accept friends, because they follow us, accept us first, without a background check, without testing the chemistry, without sharing anything with them. Why do we do that? It probably has to do with human nature, with our necessity to be liked, that someone finds us interesting, and our hope to be understood. We like if others like and share our posts, because it shows us that we are not irrelevant to others. At the same time it also changes all values that used to accompany friendship. In social media websites we blindly trust, if we may accept someone as a friend who we don’t know, who nobody recommended to us and who we may not share any interest with. 

By using social media one shifts from becoming a private person to a public person. The spheres of private and public become blurred, even if one only shares information in specific circles, others may still become aware of it. As soon as someone comments or likes one of your posts, other circles gain access to that same information, even though it was meant to be private. Being aware of that, most people don't share the same information online as they would in person. Others enjoy being in the lime-light and get inspired by having a virtual audience and may share even more. Still others see it as teaching tool, as a way to spread their way of life, their views, their political opinions and use it massively. So for most people the online content differs strongly from what they would share in face-to-face meetings with friends.

But can online sharing fulfill the same function as sharing among friends? Probably online comments can instantly make you feel better, noticed, appreciated or consoled. Social media is a great forum to share information quickly and get instant feedback. People can send immediate positive vibes and give instant virtual hugs. That surely has a positive effect on the individual who is in need of comfort. Also, if you just won something (lottery or award) or finished your first marathon or half-marathon (still on my bucket list!) people can instantly congratulate you and enhance your sense of accomplishment. So for positive achievements, it is wonderful to spread the word. When new babies are born, within hours many mothers post the photos of their new babies on facebook, so that everyone in their circles can adore them. Also, if you have any sort of bad news, you can share it with your circles and get instant feedback, e.g. if you locked yourself out of the house again, if you are stranded with a flat tire, if your hot water stopped working in the middle of winter, if your son broke his arm jumping down the staircase, etc. Your friends and followers instantly send good vibes, best wishes, virtual hugs and things already seem a little better. Some even send real help to get you out of your crisis. Even when close friends or relatives die, people tend to post the announcements on facebook. They receive instant condolence messages that make them feel less alone. So all these things are positive as they bring people closer together faster. 

But be aware, if a person over-shares (e.g. pictures of every meal, most outfits, and most activities) others may block them or start to ignore all their posts. Nobody’s life is that interesting all the time that we crave ALL the details, right? At times, we may also ignore a person, because their life seems not spectacular enough as mirrored in the photos and comments they post on social media. They may not have a gift with words or may not be so good looking or may not live very daring lives, so we consciously or subconsciously ignore them or may decide stop following them. As quickly as we started following them, because they seemed interesting at that time, we may drop them. Being "in" and "out" changes quickly and online trends are fleeting. So, in contrast to real friendships, online connections can be very superficial and short-lived. At times, online posts seem like a popularity contest or a demonstration of who has the best, most comfortable life, who looks the best (for their age) and who "made it." But we always have to remember that any online presence is very controlled: You only share what you want others to know. This put forward only those parts of yourself that you want to publicize and leaves a lot of open blanks, which create a quite distorted image of yourself. And even the information that is shared, may not even be accurate, but purposefully picked to impress others.

Online friendships can boost our ego and fulfill short-term needs that we may crave. Social media platforms created an easy way to stay in touch with many people that we share some personal or professional history with, but all online connections, circles, friends or followers can never substitute real friends. While you gain some insights into parts of people's lives and maybe a few of their thoughts and daily routines through social media, you cannot really see who they are, who they have become, and who they want to be. You cannot sit with them over a cold beer or a glass of red wine after a good meal and talk, laugh or cry with them about things that really matter to you.