Steve Rubel suggests that the web is making friendship “more about quantity and less about quality.” I see something quite different. I have more friends because of the web, but at the same time, my relationships whether friendship or acquaintanceship are stronger.
Maybe the web makes it possible for us to have more friends without decreasing the overall quality of our friendships — at least to a point. Because of Facebook, email, blogging, and instant messaging, I’m back in touch with good friends from long ago. Because of those tools plus Twitter, people who would have formerly just been acquaintances I now consider friends, or at least on the way to being friends.
The difference between in-person connectedness and web connectedness
The relationship between friendship quality and friendship quantity is probably U-shaped, especially in the physical world. More friends up to a point means higher quality friendships. When you have very few friends, you might expect too much of each of them. As you reach some optimal number of friends, you have plenty of time to keep up with them but aren’t so demanding of their time or emotional support, because you have enough friends to supply that. Then, as you keep adding friends, the quality of your friendships suffers. You don’t keep in touch with everyone except superficially. You don’t provide them much emotional support because you’re spread too thin.
But the web changes that. More connectedness suddenly jumps us to a totally different curve of friendship quality vs. friendship quantity. You can stay in touch with many more people. You can give specially targeted support because you understand much better the contours and context of each friend’s life. You can connect and communicate with much less trouble than before, because you know when your friends are available and how best to reach them.
The evidence from my own online life
Here are a few examples from my own life of how more connectedness suddenly makes more relating possible, with an increase rather than a decrease in relationship quality:
- I joined Facebook because all my friends were a couple months ago. A former colleague discovered me there and got in touch to find out my thoughts on the social web. Now we’re working together again.
- My best friend from college ran into my name twice online in the span of a week and got in touch with me by email. We had not had contact in probably five years, due to the difficulties of managing our mobile and motherly lives.
- Chris Brogan was twittering recently about a topic of mutual interest. I tweeted back so then he and I ended up on the phone together, discussing social media. Chris and I “knew” each other beforehand via our various online activities — but we certainly wouldn’t have had any reason to talk on the phone if not for that casual Twitter interaction.
- I’ve made a bunch of acquaintances who might become friends in Denver through my online activities. This is “glocalization” as defined by Barry Wellman: Internet-era global connectedness does not come at the expense of local connectedness but complements and adds to it.
- I’m even closer to my husband because of our online connectedness. With Twitter, IM, and Facebook, we can make up earlier and more conveniently after any fights we have during the morning rush; we can stay in touch without disturbing each other; we can watch what each other is doing socially online.
I imagine the friendship quality versus friendship quantity curve is still U-shaped — one person can’t maintain thousands of “friendships” even online. But the curve is in a different place now. I might even call it a tipping point or a phase transition. Or maybe a bursting of our social lives.
To be sure
That’s not to say you should go gather as many online “friends” as possible, or that everyone you call a friend in Facebook or elsewhere qualifies as that in the traditional sense of the word. The most human value still comes from authentic one-on-one connections. It’s just a whole lot easier to create and maintain and deepen those now.
5 Comments
Agreed.
Also agreed. Without blogs etc I would lose touch with a lot of people. Maybe these folks are merely acquaintances now, once friends, but keeping them acquaintances makes is so that in the next phase of my life they might be friends again. In fact, I’m now catching up with my college best friend, all because I found her blog.
These tools have built much more connectedness between people I want to get to know, and who often eventually become someone I call a friend. This wasn’t how media used to be. Think about only 10 years ago. If I read your work in a paper magazine, I’d have to send you a letter, or maybe, if your publication was daring, an email. I’d never expect you to write me back.
And now? I can tell what you’re up to in a given day (when you choose that to be the case), and I can tell what you’re interested in (via your Facebook), and I can share things (namely stories, as I’m seeing lots of twitterings becoming posts on good sites) with you that might otherwise have not merited a communications channel.
These things are only stupid if we let them be. For us, they can be about something useful.
Weird one: my wife and I play Scrabble now via Facebook. We never think to get out the board in real life (little kids equals missing pieces), but we can play to our heart’s content, even if I’m away at a conference.
Great post, Anne.
Anne, great post! (Incidentally, I learned of this post via a Twitter from Chris Brogan.)
I started using social media as a way to keep in touch with “real life” friends, and ended up finding a lot of old friend whom I had been out of touch with for years. At the time, I was finding everyone on Friendster, then MySpace, LinkedIn, and more recently Facebook. I still use all of the above for different purposes/groups.
Twitter is a different sort of phenomenon, and I have gained the most new friends from that service—makes sense, considering that over time, the minutiae of our daily lives paint a fairly accurate picture of our personalities (or the parts that we choose to expose). I really credit Twitter with turning my acquaintances from various PodCamps into a group of real friends.
I really appreciate your depiction of the U-shaped curve. The quality of my relationship with every single one of my social media contacts has been strengthened by the network, even if it’s just making the initial reconnection with an old friend who I would have otherwise not gotten back in touch with.
Still, I am careful to trim the branches of my social networks, especially Twitter, where I only follow people that I know in real life. I agree that there is a point at which quantity negatively affects quality, but I would like to hear a dissenting opinion. Chris?
Awesome post, Anne. I’ve riffed off both you and Steve at my blog also. Not nearly as good as this, though.
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