The Curious Phenomenon of Facebook "Friends"

The phenomenon of Facebook "friends," a concept I have always found somewhat dubious, has come to seem even moreso of late, thanks to the spate of members of the Warwick High School class of 1989 who have recently contacted me, among others. There is, as far as I know, nothing wrong with these people. Some of them I am genuinely happy and intrigued to hear from. It is simply the case that some of these petitions for "friendship" seem to be indicative of a relaxed meaning of the word, which may be a shame.

Since I began this with a reference to contacts from members of my high school graduating class, let me begin with high school. In the now nearly twenty years since graduating high school, I have been in regular contact with two, one of whom graduated two years before me and who is now my wife of fifteen years, the other of whom is the oldest friend I am currently in contact with. There are other old friends with whom I have had intermittent contact over the years and with whom I am still happy to have a chat and a beer.

There are a few people currently awaiting approval. These are people whose names I remember, but whom I knew, at best, tangentially. Twenty years ago. This is at the heart of the curious nature of Facebook friendship.

These are most likely fine people. But I did not know them then, and I am certainly not going to open myself up to them now. I feel on some days as though I have compromised my cherished notions of friendship with the 53 "friends" on my list. Again, these are all fine people. Nonetheless, they are not all people I would invite to a wedding, or ask for help if I were in trouble, nor would I expect this of them, and that sort of reciprocal relationship, to me, has been the defining characteristic of friendship.

Because once I get an idea I am hard-pressed to let it go and because I can be obsessive about things, I did a survey. On the day of the survey there were 53 friends on my list. Those friends had a total of 7621 friends on their lists, counting repeats.* This is an average, allowing for rounding, of 144 friends per person. Digging deeper, some interesting numbers stick out, showing the danger of averages. For instance, there are the high and low ends, 770 and three. And the median number of friends was 82, showing that there is a small group of people with a lot of friends (770, 550, 546, 417, 344 were the top five) dragging the numbers up.

I actually understand why the person with 770 friends has this number, but I am still staggered by these high-end numbers. Not because these are not good people or because I am an introvert (though to an extent I am). It is simply impossible to have more than a basic passing acquaintance with so many people.

What does all this mean? The likely answer is that, like the dollar, the basic value of friendship is slipping with inflation. Ten years ago, I could count the number of people I would call my friend on my fingers. Now there are fifty-some odd people out there with access to some details on my life who are called my friends and potentially many more through this blog. But all of the things these people have access to are things I would not be ashamed to have publicly known. I don't get the sense that such reserve is the rule.

The reason for this may lie in biology, in the fact that, as humans, we have evolved to live in small hunter-gatherer groups and that, as far as culture has moved in the last ten thousand years, biology moves more slowly. This disconnect is worth exploring, but will have to wait for another post.

In the meantime, if anyone from the Warwick High School Class of 1989 reads this and is awaiting my answer on Facebook "friendship" I'm sorry. You are no doubt a good person and it is quite possible that my life would be vastly enriched for having known you. But my dance card is pretty full at the moment, and I need to hold the line somewhere.

* Edited for truth. The post originally read "not counting repeats" which makes me seem even more obsessive than I already was.