Friends

We have all had our fair share of friendships and bonds with unexpected people we would never have imagined to be so close with. Friendships bring support and joy and occasionally drame from time to time, but what type of relationship doesn't. Your five today may not be your five next week; people drift among layers and sometimes fall out of them altogether.

I myself have had my fair share of friends and to look back now most the ones I had in high school were just kind of people you associate with on a day to day because we went to the same school, had the same classes and routine schedule. Then you have those "best friends" who are like your soulmate and you go through it all together, someone you have by your side through anything and everything. 

Our real-world friends tend to know the same people that we do, but in the online world, we can expand our networks. It is always easier to have that 1,125 friends on Facebook, but how many are truly your friends out side of the social networking? You can have 895 followers on Instagram, but they are just viewing your life through what you allow. With social media, we can easily keep up with the lives and interests of far more than the people we socialize with on a daily basis. These are the kind of superficial relationships we have with people we don't connect on a face-to-face level. “On the internet, you can pull the plug and walk away. There’s no forcing mechanism that makes us have to learn.” -Dunbar

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born." -Anais Nin


 Konnikova, M. (2014, October 07). The Limits of Friendship. Retrieved November 16, 2016, from http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/social-media-affect-math-dunbar-number-friendships