Why I love online friends—and why I have weird feelings about loving them
Relationship status: it's complicated
Making friends as a grown-up is hard. It’s not as if I’m the first one to break this news, and if you’re feeling the sting of this fact (as I am), I certainly don’t mean to rub it in.
Weirdly, though, when I sought out research about this subject, the pickings were pretty slim. Sure, I can wax poetic (you KNOW I can) about taking a different path from the friends we met in our younger years, the power of nostalgia in relationships, the lingering effects of the pandemic, etc., etc., but you want info from real experts. This is well-trod territory, so you would think more smart, qualified people would be out there explaining it to us in further, better-educated detail.
Still, I’d like to set the stage for my conversation about online community with some info about the problematic nature of forming friendships as an adult. Here’s what we’ve got…
This Inc. article quotes an NPR interview with psychologist Marisa Franco, who notes that key ingredients for making friends organically are “continuous unplanned interaction and shared vulnerability.” She goes on to explain that these ingredients are in shorter and shorter supply as we get older.
Similarly, this Forbes piece names “spontaneity” as something we tend to lose in adulthood. Chance meetings and spontaneous interactions—whether in the high school hallway, at a frat party, working on the school newspaper, etc.—tend to be especially fertile ground for friendships that take deeper root over time.
In an interview with The New York Post, author Lane Moore—whose book How to Be Alone was published in 2018—explains that scheduling is another major factor. This isn’t especially exciting reasoning, but it’s true! With less time for play and fun, we’re not as likely to explore new, unproven friendships.
Thank you, experts! Based on my own (uneducated, purely anecdotal) experience, here are a few other boundaries to adult friendships that I would add to the list:
Pride. As an adult, it’s hard to make the first move in extending yourself to a potential new friend, no matter how much you want to spend time with them.
Comparison. Many of us only find ourselves in need of new friends because—thanks to geography or other changing circumstances—our “old” friends are less in the picture than they were previously. If those relationships are used as the measuring stick against which new ones are assessed, it can be really hard to see growing connections clearly.
Our identities have grown more complicated. In my latest update on life as a mom, I talk about my experience making mom friends. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t feel exactly the way I thought it would! Yes, I want to find connection with others who are in a similar life stage to mine, but as a thirty-three-year-old, I have the years of life experience to require other connection points with social prospects. As kids, our identities are more straightforward, but over time, we want to be seen for all of our multitudes—even if, at first, we’re looking to satisfy just one of our identities.
Exhaustion. I’m tired. You’re tired. We’re all tired.
Okay, we’ve covered that. Now let’s get to the real topic at hand: online friendships.
My gut tells me that everything I’ve shared so far about why it’s so hard to make new friends as a grown-up has been at least somewhat true across generations. The more things change, the more they stay the same, blah blah blah. But the connected nature of the internet has, of course, opened up new avenues for relationships that we haven’t always had. Pervasive loneliness and isolation at the height of the pandemic forced many of us to lean into online friendships, even if we hadn’t done so before.
Currently Reading: Varina Palladino’s Jersey Italian Love Story by Terri-Lynne Defino
The early chapters of this book were a challenge because they served as an introduction to a large family of characters, many of whom have very similar names. It was hard to keep track! Now that I’m into it, though, I’m finding the story to be a lot of fun. A bookseller friend of mind recommended Varina to me last year and I’m glad I was reminded of it when I saw it at the library a few months ago. If you love family stories, add it to your TBR.
According to 2021 research published by the Survey Center on American Life, 39% of Americans report having online-only friendships or friends they only interact with on the internet. (For what it’s worth, if you’re a person interested more broadly in the nature of friendship in 2024, I highly recommend giving that research a read.)
My personal experience with online friendships is—luckily for me—richer and more dynamic than this statistic would suggest.
Thanks, I think, to the nature of what I do for a living, I found myself seeking out "work friends” online before everyone and their mother started working from home. I would meet one solopreneur or freelancer who would introduce me to another solopreneur or freelancer… and before I knew it, I had a little network established! That network grew further when, in 2018, I launched my podcast and started getting to know fellow readers in the bookstagram space who’d found my show. Since then, many of those folks have followed me into different creative endeavors. We’ve gotten to know each other across multiple platforms, and many of my little online networks have started to overlap! For me, “online friends” aren’t—per the Survey Center on American Life—simply people I only interact with on the internet. In many cases, they’re the people who’ve grown to know me best through some pretty major life changes over the last couple of years, especially a pandemic move from New York City to Philadelphia.
Online friendships can get a bad rap, but I don’t think that’s always fair. I’m an introvert who keeps a pretty small circle, and I’ve still found that these relationships offer a few things that are different and special.
Consistency. Regardless of moving and pandemics and babies and all of the other things, these friends are (for the most part) right where you left them. It’s unique to form a bond with someone outside the bounds of “normal” (IRL) life because it allows for that bond to exist through all of the ups and downs of that “normal” (IRL) life.
Investment. Like all relationships, friendships made remotely require a level of commitment and investment from all parties… but it feels like an extra step when someone says, “I have the whole internet and I still choose to be your friend!”
Compatibility. One of the things I’ve most enjoyed about establishing adult friendships with people I’ve met online is that it’s easy to find folks who share my interests in a meaningful way. That can be more challenging in the smaller pool of a single neighborhood or city.
I’m not exactly sure what to call this one and I feel sort of lame phrasing it this way but… multimedia? I don’t know! There’s something about the richness of being able to forge a relationship with someone through different media that’s kind of cool.
All that said—and as much as I adore my so-called “online friends”—there’s something about this whole category of relationship that makes me a little uncomfortable… and it’s probably not what you think.
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