Will You Be My Friend?
Just over one year ago, I joined Facebook and began a novice social experiment. After I joined, I decided not to add anyone as my Facebook friend to see how quickly my network would grow by only accepting friend requests from others. (I will excuse the poor grammar of using “friend” as the verb instead of “befriend” since this seems to be appropriate language on Facebook.) My wife started the process by friending me. Soon after, my siblings followed suit, which started a stream of friend requests from high school, college, and law school. I originally intended to be a stand-offish facebooker for just a few weeks, but the novelty did not pass, and I decided to see what my friend-list looked like after a full year. I now have a respectable collection of 221 Facebook friends.
It was the concept of friendship that prompted my actions on Facebook. We live in an interesting cultural period that merges the concepts of friendship and acquaintance. I believe that merging the friendship/acquaintance concept with social networking creates an unhealthy combination of superficiality and voyeurism masked in the guise of friendship. Meaningful friendship is significant and rare, not immediate and commonplace. And while it is pleasing to have acquaintances - even a large number of acquaintances - it is important not to confuse the concept with friendship.
It strikes me that many people add individuals to their friend list for a quick peek at the pictures and a glance at what their new friend does for a living—reality TV light. Admittedly people use Facebook a number of different ways, from Facebook-stalking and e-commerce to political campaigning and event-publicity. Not only is it unnecessary for everyone to use Facebook in the same manner, but it is foolish to expect such a versatile tool to have a uniform purpose. The many uses for Facebook certainly warrant discussion, but that is not my point in this writing. Over the last year, my focus was to evaluate how the use of Facebook speaks to the modern definition of friendship.
A Social Experiment
To evaluate the concept of Facebook friends, I handled each of my friend requests in a similar manner. I accepted everyone who made a request and followed each request with a short note. The structure of the message included a greeting, questions about the person’s life/job/hobbies, a few comments about my life, and a conclusion. I then kept track of who responded. Unfortunately (though perhaps primarily a commentary on my own lack of likeability), people responded to my notes at about a 33% rate—not exactly a counterargument to my argument that Facebook friends do not necessarily constitute meaningful friendships.
Admittedly, my survey is not entirely conclusive, nor is it particularly scientific, but I think the low rate of return correspondence certainly speaks to my concerns regarding the potential ills of Facebook relationships. While social networking can be both entertaining and a valuable method of enhancing relationships, it does not seem to be a tool to start meaningful friendships from scratch.
Defining Friendship
Proverbs 17 notes that a friend loves at all time, which suggests a willingness to put others’ needs before your own. John 15 follows with the more emphatic statement that “there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” These are strong words that meaningfully shape my definition of friendship.
I have always had a narrow concept of friendship that includes a small group of mutual relationships based on loyalty, intimacy, and trust. These characteristics seldom exist within the click/add sequence of the Facebook friend list. I offer this writing less as a criticism than an attempt to express hope—hope that all of the people on my friend list have someone in their lives that they intimately trust with the inevitable struggles that accompany life. I know sincere friendship can come through Christ, and I know that I have enjoyed loving relationships with a small group of people I can call friends. I also know that far too often people struggle to find connectedness and settle for mediocre substitutes.
Without friendship, the world can be a very lonely place. True friends provide comfort and support. Friends serve as counsel and say what needs to be said, even when the words are difficult. Friends give of themselves out of love and receive the same in return. Friendship is interactive and transparent, but not in the way Facebook demonstrates. A distressed status update and accompanying comments cannot take the place of kind words and an embrace.
Acquaintances have value. They move the day along at work, they make social events more interesting, and they also plant the seeds for future friendship. As it relates to Facebook, I have certainly been the recipient of needed kind words on the site—oftentimes from individuals I consider acquaintances and not necessarily devoted friends. Facebook entertains me, and I welcome to chance to maintain contact with people whom I no long see on a regular basis, but I think there is more to adding a friend than merely clicking a link. That said, I do not expect to begin a mass un-friending endeavor now that my year is complete. Instead, I will attempt to write updates of a comment-worthy nature, I will add pictures and book-reviews, and throw a few “like” buttons around when people make me laugh. But I also hope to maintain the lines between acquaintance and friendship, so I don’t lose sight of the value that meaningful friendship provides.
