What I think facebook is guilty of this. We were all online, but we were all online for our own separate motivations. Some sharing pictures. Some writing blog stye updates. Some sharing central feed posts. Some chatting with a few friends. Some talking politics. Some organizing for weddings.
Facebook created the image that we were closer friends than we actually were in our 20s, then ripped the image apart in our 30s.
We need to think deeply if we were ever as close as we pretended and then remake the friendships if they actually were real. Those of us who never were friends in the past could always re-evaluate and see if we are better fit to be friends now.
If I did actually destroy good friendships, I want to repair them. If we were just imagining it there’s nothing to repair, but we could evaluate each other.
We need to take a long view on this and stabilize in the middle.
Until facebook does its next major redesign, the downward spiral is going to continue as traffic continues to hemorrhage and we will all feel “unfriended.”
edit: I really loved and found comfort in the idea that we were all online using our real names together. And we’re never going to have that feeling again because Facebook has hit its peak and the rest of the web is anonymous or semi-anonymous. I’m truly open to coming together with friends. The days where I’m trying to shock are over.