Online social networks are a crazy thing. Most people will add the usual family, friends from school, friends from work, their neighbours, etc. on their social media accounts, but it is scary the amount of people that would add someone on, for example, Facebook that they have only just met or even somebody that they haven’t even met at all.
Lets continue using Facebook as an example. The average number of friends that people have on Facebook is around 130, but how many of these people are actually classed as “friends?”
Ever since it was created by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, Facebook has been a great way to stay in contact with everyone you know (including friends and family). I mean what better way to share news than through a platform that has the majority of people you know on it and even those who don’t have Facebook would be told by someone who does! You can stay in contact with people no matter where you are or what you are doing.
Facebook is also an easy way to keep people within your social network and extend it further, simply because nearly everyone has it! New colleague at work? Add them on Facebook. Met someone at a concert? Add them on Facebook. Found out about a long-lost relative? Add them on Facebook!
Facebook even helps you through this process by suggesting friends that have number of mutual friends with you!
However, a large number of people we have on Facebook are considered more “acquaintances” than actual friends. So why do we have them on Facebook?
Personally, I think a lot of it is down to convenience. Facebook is a really easy way to create groups with people you share something in common with. For example, before I started at university, I (among many people) joined the Reading Freshers page and group chat in order to get to know people before I started university and to find out as much as I could about the uni and all the different events going on. I even found a seperate page and group chat for the halls I was staying in. And now that I am at uni, I have different groups for my courses and modules and the different societies that I am part of.
There are even groups and pages out there for common interests, allowing discussions about things such as music, films and celebrities, connecting you with a wide variety of people with the same interests all over the world!
Previously, before the time of social media, it was more difficult to keep people within your social network. Whereas now, Facebook and other social media pages give us the ability to talk to whoever we want, whenever we want! Plus with the amount of different pages and group chats for everything you can possibly think of, you can expand your social network more than ever before!
Comment below with your thoughts or even an example of where Facebook has allowed you to connect with your social network!
MJC Language and New Media Blog 
I really agree with the points you’ve made in this blog Morgan. I personally use Facebook a lot to socialise with family abroad. My Uncle lives in France and seems to only understand how Facebook messenger works, so that is our only means of communication. I also use it like you for group chats relating to course projects at uni as it is a pretty universal platform that most people have. Regarding your point that most people we have on Facebook are more “acquaintances”, I completely agree. I am guilty of having friends on Facebook whom I’ve never spoken to or even met, I’m not really sure why I even have them anymore. Part of me thinks it’s because I’m simply too lazy to go through my friends list and delete them but part of me also thinks, but what if I need to message them about something one day? I’m not sure why but I think many of us are guilty of ‘friend hoarding’ for no particular reason.
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Great post! Your idea about a large number of our Facebook friends being more like ‘acquaintances’ really hit home with me. I would say that If I saw them in the street, I wouldn’t say hello to 90% of my Facebook ‘friends’! I often think of Facebook to be the ‘daddy’ of social media. Its still the biggest platform around, but I find more and more people (especially younger generations!) are flocking to other social media apps instead; making it more and more obsolete in its age. In all seriousness, I think the fact that everyone’s parents are on Facebook now has something to do with it. I mean, do you really want your mum seeing your drunken selfies?
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Loved this! I think Facebook, for all of its faults, is an excellent way of keeping in touch with people that we possibly otherwise wouldn’t. I added people I met at a festival last year when I was there in the field having only known them for half an hour or so ! I’m really glad I did, because it’s meant i’ve been able to keep in touch with them and organise future meet ups, which I would never have done if Facebook wasn’t around. It’s also so convenient for things like work; my work has a group chat set up for lifeguards and makes it so much easier to swap shifts or get cover if you’re off.
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I definitely agree with some of your points Morgan. I find myself having facebook “friends” that I don’t actually know and that I’ve never met. I think the reason of this is that when I was younger my friends and I used to compare the number of facebook friends we had, my aim was to reach a larger number. I remember I used to add random people just because we were passionate about the same boyband. Luckily, I’m now a conscious user: I just accept requests of people that I know in real life. Most of the time, I don’t add people that facebook suggests to me even if I actually know them, simply because I don’t use facebook as much as I used to. I think it might be related to our background and common behaviour, but in Italy no one really uses facebook anymore. At least, for my generation it has lost relevance and younger people don’t even have an account. Whenever I open my home, I only see posts of adults. Is it different in your country? Do you have specific group of people that use the platform more than others? In Italy the biggest social media right now is Instagram: pretty much everyone has it, even if you don’t post anything, you just watch your friends stories or you follow pages you like. For this reason, when I meet new people, the first thing we share is not our phone number or our facebook account, but our instagram profile. However, even if I don’t use facebook that much, I must admit that it is useful for the university group: I’m always updated, I can ask questions and look for information. Also, since older generations use facebook, it’s nice to see what’s going on with people I know that are older than me. For example, sometimes I find out that someone got married or they had a baby, which is nice to discover. So overall, even if I don’t really use facebook anymore, keeping the account is useful for receiving uni information and for checking in people’s lives that I don’t talk to on an everyday basis.
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I really agree with the points you’ve made here Morgan! We seem to add everyone and anyone on social media. I have tons of people who I met during freshers that I follow on Facebook, Instagram or have on Snapchat, who I’ve never spoke to again. I have 850 ‘friends’ on Facebook! I don’t even talk to 10% of them in real life!
Technology has definitely changed the way we interact with each other. It has turned ‘friend’ into a verb and has made us share our thoughts and news with people with hundreds or even thousands of people who might only know us slightly, if even at all!
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Really interesting. Going through my own Facebook friends I’ve noticed that I’ve never contacted most of them. The tenuous link between users who add one another really seems to be a weak if not false bond (although a select few people I’ve met solely through Facebook are now close friends of mine who I see and interact with regularly). I wonder whether the app is not at fault, but rather it is our willingness to hoard friends. Maybe this search for a sense of popularity drives us into having hundreds of connections but a lack of real interaction. I also liked your positive comments about Facebook, such as the way you have used its group chat functions, which I look into on my own blog.
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As soon as I finished reading your blog, I opened up my Facebook app to check my friends list. To my surprise there was over 1400 people on it. Then I went on whatsApp to check the amount of people I contact on a regular basis – around 1% of the number of Facebook friends, that’s crazy.
Like you have mentioned, the Facebook friends function is more than just for close friend but also people you’ve met only briefly from various occasions. The amount of friends I have met has accumulated over the past 10 years, where I’ve added people from primary school, secondary school, summer camps, family and friends, as well as university.
Although I do not keep in closer contact with over 90% of these “friends”, I believe there is still value in keeping them there. Years after graduating from primary and secondary school, you get plenty of updates about people you once know, which is interesting and nostalgic of the times you’ve once spent together. When I entered into uni, I saw a Facebook post of a primary school classmate I haven’t contacted in 6 years, who got into the same school as me. We were able to instantly catch up with each other through the comment and messenger function, which was awesome.
At the end of the day, keeping those Facebook friends meet but be essential, but it definitely holds its value.
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I agree with you Morgan, I started using Facebook when I was in high school. I only added my close friends in reality as friends on Facebook because it allows me to interact with people I am close to. However, the use of Facebook has became opposite to me now. I add people who I have only met once as friends and I don’t tend to add my close friends on Facebook because I use Whatsapp to message them. I also agree that not all of our friends on Facebook are considered as real friends because I have more than 300 friends on Facebook but I won’t consider any of them as my friends because they are more likely to be strangers I’ve talked to in different occasions. The reason I add them as friends on Facebook is because I believe that keeping in contact with someone you’ve met won’t harm because you might meet them again or need them for different purposes, such as needing them for work or projects for school. I would also like to know about their lives and posts on Facebook because if I only added my friends in reality, I would not have a lot of posts and photos to see.
I have also joined the university freshers group on Facebook. Although I do not connect with most of my friends on Facebook. Facebook does allow us to connect with relevant people and groups. This makes our lives as a university students more convenience because access relevant news about activities only available to freshers. Although I don’t use Facebook to connect with my Facebook friends, I do believe that Facebook still has its value because it allows you to reach out to different communities and information rather than connecting with people you already know.
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