Social Media Friends

Each week in this course, we are asked to present over the readings we do outside of class. In addition, we are typically asked to include some sort of educational activity to go along with it. One of the group’s activities in particular led me to think a great deal about the types of friends people have on their social media accounts. Earlier in the week, I received a friend request on both my Facebook and Instagram accounts. I noticed I had mutual friends with these people, so I didn’t hesitate to add them. I thought nothing of it. Later in the week when it came time for class, the presenting group indicated that for their activity they had created fake social media accounts and added most of the people in the class. Immediately, it dawned on me that the people I had added earlier in the week were the said accounts. We were then asked why we added them even though none of us knew them, and most of us had a similar response: we just added them. They looked like they were in our age group and could have easily been a fellow student. Myself, I thought they were people I had met in passing or someone just trying to add friends and get better connected with the university. Little did I know that I was playing my part in my classmates’ social experiment.

            The experiment above led me to think about the friends we have on social media. I have between 1,000-1,500 friends on Facebook, but I have intimate relationships with only a handful of them. Hundreds of my so-called friends are people I have not had a single interaction with, other than friending them and maybe posting the occasional “Happy Birthday” post on their wall. Yet, in some ways, social media has offered me a front row seat in watching their lives. I have some friends on Facebook I have never spoken with, yet I can name every one of their nuclear family members and pets based on the information mined from their posts. This realization is alarming, to say the least. If I know so much about these people, what do they know about me? By simply visiting my Facebook page, a stranger can learn where I work, attend college, who I am dating, etc. Social media is allowing us to expand our social circle, but at what cost? How many of those seemingly friendly looking people are in fact wolves in sheeps’ clothing? Who knows? Perhaps, I would benefit from going through and deleting some of these unknown people filling up my newsfeed. Ultimately, my classmates’ social experiment proved a success, as it got me to think about the friends I have on my social media accounts.