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Ryan Healy is a recent college graduate. He is a founder of 
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New here? Employee Evolution is a blog written by Ryan Healy. Ryan is a Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist, the webs #1 social network for young professionals. Ryan speaks with organizations on best practices for recruiting and retaining Generation Y and how to effectively use social media to reach your target market. To contact Ryan, please visit our contact page.
One of the most difficult things I’ve faced since graduating college is keeping up with my friends. You would think that because of Facebook, MySpace, Linked In, Blogs, Twitter and all the other fancy social networking tools out there, staying in touch would be easy. And I’m sure it is much easier than it was in the past.
However, a yearly happy birthday wish on a friend’s Facebook wall, or following your friends’ daily lives through their blogs and Twitter updates, is a far cry from maintaining a friendship. Real friendships start because of a connection between you and another human being, maintaining those friendships requires putting in the effort to preserve that connection.
What social networks have created is a plethora of weak interpersonal ties. Wikipedia says,
More novel information flows to individuals through weak rather than strong ties. Because our close friends tend to move in the same circles that we do, the information they receive overlaps considerably with what we already know. Acquaintances, by contrast, know people that we do not, and thus receive more novel information.
Social networks are great, as you can see from the above definition; they’re actually a breeding ground for the creation of weak ties. These networks give the user the ability to create hundreds or thousands of weak ties, all transmitting novel information through their respective networks.
But these networks also make it very easy to decrease the number of strong ties or actual friends that each of us has. When we all leave college and move to different parts of the country, we’re no longer moving in the same familiar circles. Without a conscious effort, it’s very easy for old best friends become weak tied, online acquaintances.
Everyone should embrace new technology and social networks to create as many weak ties as possible. Having a million online acquaintances allows you to embrace the diversity that exists in the world and provides the connections you need to advance anywhere you want in your career. But the way I see it, a thousand weak ties cannot replace the connection that comes from one strong tie.
So, pick up the phone and have a heart to heart with your best friend from college, log into Gmail and start a conversation with your High School buddy, or send a long email to your ex girlfriend or boyfriend (assuming he/she doesn’t hate you).
I’m going to take my own advice and do the same, because other than family, I can’t think of one thing more important than a strong tie and a solid friendship.
Great post, I as well am an advocate for strategic mixed use of old and new technologies to maintain relationships of substantial worth. I find it interesting how you suggest having a long phone call with your best friend from college, (instead of using AIM), but advocate sending a long e-mail to your past relationships (instead of a letter in the mail). My point here is that e-mail has become the accepted way of written correspondence, is it only a matter of time before a new form of verbal correspondence is accepted that makes the phone obsolete (ie Skype)?
Good post, Ryan. I can agree on lots of points. These “new” technologies definitely create an opportunity to make new weaker ties, but I don’t think it necessarily weakens the already strong ones.
With the help of cell phones, I can reach my best friend (who now lives several states away) at almost any time of the day. Not just after 5pm, when she’s home and trying to spend precious time with her new husband.
We both keep personal blogs with a very exclusive list of readers where we’ve all made habit of bearing our souls and getting all of our complicated thoughts in order, which almost always prompts a phone call to talk about what’s going on in life.
Timing no longer has to be an issue - the other day when I was really stressed out, I spent my time in class discussing the problem with by best friend and my sister on my laptop through IM, all while still complying with the mandatory attendance policy.
Sure, the danger exists that friendships can fall apart, but that danger existed long before new technologies came into play. My parents have plenty of friends who got married and moved away and they keep in touch once a year through a Christmas card. Keeping strong friendships, regardless of generation, takes work and has to be a conscious decision.
Matt - Thanks! I think the point about email v. snail mail is pretty much irrelevant to people our age. I see no reason why a hand written letter is more personal than an email. Its just a bigger pain in the butt! Also, I think something like Skype might make phones obsolete, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re talking with someone who is not in the same geographic location as you.
Jacqui - I think you’re right, technology doesn’t weaken the strong ones if you put in the effort. But it makes putting in the effort more difficult. If you’re following 1000 people around through Facebook, you have a lot less time to get on the phone with your friend for 2 hours at night.
Great point about timing. You can pretty much talk to anyone, anytime you both happen to be on the computer. However, if you’re both working or in class etc. the conversation might not be as valuable or informative as one where you’re not multitasking.
All in all, you’re right, the danger of friendships falling apart has always been there, and despite everything going on with technology, its up to us to keep friendships alive or watch them crumble.
-Ryan
A few thoughts on this
1) Social media breaks boundaries, chokeholds and limitations, which allow you to meet and befriend more people in less time.
2) If you’re popular, it’s nearly impossible to keep track of everyone, especially as you age.
I wonder; at what point does the effort required to keep a strong friendship exceed the benefit?
Look at it this way, if it’s a really big effort to stay in touch, then obviously your lives are not very intertwined any more. Friendship is all about shared experiences. If you aren’t sharing any experiences, then you can only coast so far on old stories.
I know I don’t keep up with any of my old friends from college, simply because we all live different lives now. The only thing we really had in common is that we all liked to go out on weekends and get drunk. With kids and a job, that’s not really an option anymore.
I’m just wondering if it’s better to seek out new friendships than try to keep old ones on life support.
Hitting home again with this one. My biggest problem seems to lie in the fact that my close and personal high school friends are just not as connected as I am. They would look at me weird if I said to Tweet me what is going on, or keep updating Facebook status. Mention a blog and now I’m that geek that went to college and got all sophisticated or something. But hey, these are tools that can be used to keep tabs on what is going on.
Getting off line is something that I personally need to allot time for. Making calls, visiting people and spending quality non social networking time is still a key component in life and I think sometimes we get caught up in our online life, we forget about the relationships we have off line.
@Dan -Kudus for #2, love it!
Scott,
I don’t think you have to trade old friendships for new ones. If you have to focus all your friend energy on an old friend, then yes, you should probably let it go. But no one is saying it should take that much effort - just some conscious effort. Friendship, like any relationship is a conscious choice. It doesn’t stay healthy on its own.
I don’t stay in touch with many people from high school. Actually, only one or two people. But I hold those friendships very dear. Friendship is about shared experiences, and those friends are the only ones that I grew up with. New friends may know me for where I am, but they don’t know me for where I came from, and having that tie to my past is important to me.
If life wrapped up into nice, neat little bundles like the end of a sitcom episode, with no regard for what happened last week, I would agree with you completely. But things that happen to me today are connected to things that happened in the past, and no one can understand those things like old friends.
ScottM makes a great point, sometimes you have to let go. Its impossible trying to balance your life while keeping up with others, despite the use of modern technology. Good friendships are maintained at both ends of the spectrum, if your friends can’t contact you once in a while then you better redefine that friendship.
In todays world everyone has multiple groups of friends, from high school, college, grad school, work, etc. Trying to maintain fulfilling friendships with everyone is nearly impossible even using the technology we have.
I have stayed in contact with hundreds of people throughout my life but I only have a few who I consider “friends”.
Dan - Strong ties aren’t about keeping track of everyone, thats what the weak ties are for. Strong ties are about knowing what your friends are going through, what they’re struggling with and where they plan to go int he future.
Scott - Interesting point. I actually had a discussion about this with someone older before I posted. They told me that it’s not really relevant for anyone over 30, because most of the connections just disappear as life moves on. The ones that stick around are the real friends. So you’re right that trying to keep friendships on life support is a waste, but there must be at least a few friendships that were more meaningful then social acquaintances and drinking buddies. Those are the friendships that you must keep up.
Greg - Totally agree with this point. Most of my friends aren’t as connected as I am. A lot of them do look at me as weird for blogging and updating Facebook etc. They respect it, but its not necessarily their world. So I try to get off line as much as possible as well.
I’m somewhat on the opposite side of this. While I use MySpace to keep up with people who are just as busy as me and LinkedIn to enhance my business relationships, I don’t see how having many “on-line” friends is beneficial. One of my pet peeves is when someone on MySpace sends a friend request, and it’s someone I haven’t seen since graduation. I may send a few messages back and forth, but I rarely accept the request. Furthermore, I actually make it a point to purge my MySpace friends page every few months of people that I have no real human contact with.
It’s human nature for friendships to change. Like Scott alluded to, the crowd I ran with when I was 18 had a much different dynamic than what I look for in friends now. Like any other relationship, trying to “make it work” is a good sign that it’s time to cut the chord. Keeping too many online and virtual relationships just take away from the time I have to dedicate to the real ones right in front of me.
After reading Never Eat Alone not too long ago, I was inspired to do a better job of doing that. I’ve been working on contacting old school friends, former co-workers, etc.
As an example of enhancing the standard facebook Happy Birthday wall post, I will send them a message with a piece of news or a question (requiring their knowledge/expertise/opinion) that usually gets a conversation going further.
First let me say that I’m a huge fan of facebook. When it added my college during my junior year in 2004, it was nearly the greatest thing to happen at my school that year. Anyway, I was wondering if I use facebook differently than other people my age (23). Rather than weaken my strong friendships by only communicating with them online, I hardly have any interaction with them on facebook except for the occassional funny wall post or photo tag… or game of scrabulous, at this point. I know who my close friends are, and I don’t need facebook for that. I use facebook to try to reconnect with friends from my past that I’ve lost touch with over the years, whether they’re from high school, camp, or just from growing up in my neighborhood. Is that strange?
Josh - I don’t think that’s strange at all. In fact i do the same thing. I don’t really pay attention to what my close friends are doing on Facebook, instead I check out past acquaintances.
Hi Ryan
I am writing as “someone older” - this is a very interesting post . It really made me think.
I joined Facebook at the suggestion of another oldie - with a view to connecting our business networks ( businesses being made up of people!) I have rarely used it as it is really not pushing my buttons right now. But when I first got internet access a whole 10 years ago I IM’ed like crazy and made a couple of contacts - one of whom I met up with here in Scotland when she was travelling and again when I was in Boston on holiday. That did not take a lot of effort -was fun - and lasted for a short while til we both moved on.
E-mail is by far my preferred medium of contact. Letter writing just takes too long - and then you hand it over to some organisation to deliver ( or maybe not) on your behalf.
I liked your quote
“Strong ties aren’t about keeping track of everyone, thats what the weak ties are for. Strong ties are about knowing what your friends are going through, what they’re struggling with and where they plan to go int he future.”
Forgive me sounding like an old fogey here but over time you may see less of people who were once really really important in your life but if and when you do come back into contact you will be able to pick up easily from where you left off. No guilt - just joy to be back in touch.
Love what you are doing here.
Jackie
Great post. I couldn’t agree more. When we add nearly countless friends to our profiles, it seems that social networking quickly turns into social fragmenting.
Social networks are great places to be ‘found’ online, which is important, especially for those of us who are putting ourselves out there online and want more people to see what we’re doing.
But at the end of the day, most of us would like to share a nice meal with someone we care about. And that can’t be done in Second Life or by adding any kind of Facebook ap.