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I’ve found my relationships are healthier when I keep my offline-first relationships offline (e.g. not following each other on Facebook or Instagram) — following someone’s Instagram makes it feel like I know what’s going on with them without interacting. Following offline friends on social media can reduce what used to be normal friendships into parasocial relationships.
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I suspect bringing offline relationships online is responsible for a lot of the loneliness people feel — social media looks like you have all these friends… but no one you could ask to feed your cat while you’re away, because one-to-many broadcasting replaced direct interactions 😿 Essentially, the offline relationship became an online one.
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Tracy’s observations here are absolutely excellent, and spot-on. I’ve absolutely experienced some of the problems she’s described when trying to use social media to supplement “offline-first” relationships.
Unfortunately, unilaterally following Tracy’s segregation strategy doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’re going to avoid the problems she’s identified. That’s especially true if you haven’t always followed her guidance!
Like many folks I know, I joined Facebook when it became available to me and used it to connect with most of the people I knew in the real world. And certainly, this caused a problematic blurring of our online and offline interactions! People in my friend group would switch to “broadcast mode”, not reaching out to query one another’s status and wellbeing, and coming to assume that anything they’d shared online would be universally known among their friends (I was definitely guilty of this myself; sometimes I still am!).
I dropped Facebook about 14 years ago, but it’s still the case that my offline-first friends will sometimes assume that I’ll know something that they posted there (or to some other platform). And it’s still the case that I’m not as good as I could be at reaching-out and checking-in. (At least that latter point is something actionable that I can work with, I suppose.)
After thirty years online, it seems to me that converting an online relationship to an offline one is a rarity. But converting one born-offline into an online one, or a “hybrid” one that somehow exhibits some of the worst characteristics of both, is distressingly easy… even when you don’t intend it.
Tracy’s post’s got much more to say, and I thoroughly recommend it. I don’t know that I’m personally ready to make as firm a distinction between my “online” and “offline” friends as she seems to – there are aspects of the hybrid model that actually work quite well for me, much of the time – but I like having a framework around which to think and talk about the differences.
I got rid of all my social media accounts except for my personal blog. It feels so much better not having to worry about everyone else’s problems anymore.
Do you find yourself falling into the trap of assuming that people in your personal life – “offline-first” friends – have necessarily read your blog? That’s a problem I face sometimes. I feel like I’ve done or said something multiple times, but I forget that my offline-first friends – many of whom I now communicate with online much more than offline – are “up-to-date” with what I’ve written. The same “broadcast first” trap that social media sets.
I have work do on on my self, there.