Too Many Friends?

Friends are people we choose to have in our lives. Offline, I have a network of fewer than twenty people that I interact with on a regular basis. But online, the concept of "friend" is completely different. There have been a few requests from people whom I can barely remember since I only met them a couple of times. Then there are those requests from friends of friends. While I consider myself no trophy, I sometimes feel that some people befriend others online so they have bragging rights about who they "know".

Most people don't have the time to actively manage a network of a thousand or more friends, anyway. Unless you spend all day in front of the computer, managing 130 friendships on a daily basis just is not possible. So why do some people have more than 500 friends on Facebook? I think that Facebook allows us to take a peek, to be on the outside looking in, without being involved. We become voyeurs and yet we become paranoid about who is looking at us. Does the application "Who is looking at my profile?" sound familiar? Another theory is that we feel more comfortable making connections in a computer-mediated environment than in face-to-face social interaction.

When we are children, we are more honest about our intentions. We walk up to someone and ask, "Can you be my friend?" Time, and a few rejections make us more wary of opening up to other people. The advent of social networking sites has now made it possible to either be accepted or rejected a hundred times over. The number of friends validates our popularity, never mind that after the initial "hello" you never hear from some of them again.

I check Facebook on a daily basis. That is because I currently live in San Diego and most of the relationships that matter to me are with people who are in different parts of the world. I have noticed that the most active members are the ones who have been uprooted from the place they consider home. Having that connection assuages the feeling of isolation. The Internet is my gateway and keeps me abreast of what is going on in my friends' lives even though we are far apart. In addition, the few minutes a day is about the only time I have on my hands. I invest that amount in maintaining the friendships I already have, and if I am lucky, reconnecting with those who were once a part of my life. Like anything else that is important, friendships take time and a lot of effort. I do have a couple of friends who refuse to be on Facebook but we pick up right where we left off. It does not make them any less of a friend if I cannot add them to my number of 237.