Too Many Friends

DO I HAVE TOO MANY FRIENDS?

This week, for no good reason whatsoever, I’ve spent a lot of time on Facebook. That’s fairly rare for me; I usually check for notifications and then head somewhere younger and a little more hip, like Instagram or the local plant store. But this week I browsed my “memories,” scrolled through old photos, and swiped down my feed for a while. All of this rather pointless browsing led me to ask myself one question: do I have too many friends?

“Wow,” I hear you mutter while you roll your eyes, “Too many friends. What a rough problem to have.”

But hear me out.

I came across several posts containing group photos and decided to test myself. Without looking at the person who posted it, could I tell from the group photo which “friend” I was looking at? 7 out of 10 times, the answer was no. And 4 times, even after I looked at the name of the person who posted it, I still couldn’t remember how I knew them.

IS THIS ACTUALLY A PROBLEM?

Now, I could have looked at mutual friendships and hit the classically wonderful “See Friendship” button to figure it out, but instead, the thing I kept thinking about was time.

I only have so much time and energy on this earth. How much of it do I want to put into keeping up with people I don’t talk to?

“You don’t talk to me,” you’re likely saying with some annoyance in your voice. “What, you just don’t care about me anymore? We were friends! Remember that one time we did that one thing??”

The honest answer? Ummm…I probably don’t. But I do care about you! I promise! It’s not that I don’t care. And since you’re reading this, you’re probably not even one of the people I’m talking about here. I’m talking about people I met once, and connected with, and now we run in different circles, different lives, and different states or countries. Do I care about those people? Conceptually, absolutely. If they were here in front of me, I would want to know how they’re doing. I wish them well in all their endeavors. But do I need to know where they ate brunch last weekend? No. I really don’t.

A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF FRIENDSHIPS

Let’s go back in time a little. It’s only within the last 80 years of humanity that we started to keep up with people who are outside our daily lives. It used to be if you moved away, you were pretty much gone. Letters? Yep. Later, telegraphs? Sure. But not with hundreds of people. We’re talking siblings, parents, maybe a best friend or a cousin. A circle of 5-10 people that you wrote letters to. Everyone else was just a memory without even a photograph to look back on.

Over most of human history, we grew up in small villages and towns, where people connected with and cared for the people in their direct vicinity. There was a geographical limit on how many people we knew and interacted with, and it kept our energy output low. You didn’t have to exert time and energy keeping up with your high school friends unless they still lived next door. Your boss’ wife couldn’t see what bar you went to on Saturday night. And you certainly didn’t have to remember to wish your 3rd cousin’s girlfriend happy birthday.

Now. Are there benefits to staying in touch with more people? Of course. There’s networking, sharing expertise, and having more community support, to name a few. I certainly would not recommend going back in time to only talking to your neighbors and sending a monthly letter to your mother.

SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

But surely there’s a happy medium here. Somewhere between staying connected with the thousands of people we meet in our lifetime and practicing isolation, I think there’s a wonderful balance that saves us energy for the people who really matter.

Maybe that means culling down my Facebook friends to only those whose middle names still stay in my memory. Or maybe it means simply spending less time online in general. Or maybe it means making a list of the people who come first, the day-to-day and week-to-week people in my life, and making sure my energy goes to them. I haven’t quite figured out how to find that balance yet, but I’m working on it.

What do you think? Do you have too many friends? Is there such a thing?