“Someone Sent You A Friend Request!”

Facebook feels unnatural to me at times. Aside from keeping up with close friends and family or sharing general observations, it has also become a place of voyeurism. We add people we barely know as “friends” and often get an automatic look into the private lives of people we haven’t even taken steps to build a sincere affection for. We can know deeply personal things about people we’ve only had one or two conversations with (maybe none at all); what their marriage is like, what their kids are like, the grief they go through losing a loved one, their personal struggles with depression, their diets, their routines, their habits, family vacation photos, and their personal views on every topic imaginable. Call me old fashioned, but I feel like those types of personal details is something I should only have the privilege of knowing after investing myself in that person’s life and proving to be both a trustworthy and supportive asset.

Instead, we often end up becoming “friends” with someone by default even after we learn they are not a person we care to get to know better. Yet their personal lives continue to be laid out before us. I can’t help but feel it’s a violation to simply indulge human curiosity if it does nothing to bond me closer to that individual. Sadly, I know my views are peculiar in this age of social media, but I’ve never been adept at cultivating shallow friendships. By nature, I am a person who prefers to go deep. I enjoy really getting to know someone over time; their needs, hurts, gifts and passions — as they feel open to sharing. Not because they shared it with the whole world in an effort to receive attention and validation from virtual strangers, but because in me they saw someone they could trust and confide in. Now, that is a privilege I take extremely seriously and aim never to betray, but when that information is only transmitted via social media posts it feels neither sacred or special. In fact, it actually seems a degradation of what true friendship is supposed to be — an exquisite treasure!

“A man of too many friends comes to ruin, But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”

Proverbs 18:24