SO MUCH HAS been written
about how technology
is weakening the delicate
fabric of human
relationships—heads buried
in screens, conversations
replaced by keyboards—
but the truth is, it can do
wonders to knit us closer
together. Remember the
girlhood dream of staying
“friends 4ever”? Our apps
and devices can make that
dream come true, offering
a connection to people
you thought were lost to the
sands of time. Your bestie
from third grade, who was
always sticking up for the
kids who got bullied?
She’s now a public defender
with four rescue cats and
a lively social media life—
and she’d be thrilled for you
to get in touch.
Today we can take our
friends with us everywhere,
virtually. One FaceTimesUSE THE TECH!
YES, THE WOMAN in those Instagram posts looks like
your buddy Kim—same mole near her left eye, same
habit of snorting when she laughs—but she is not actually
Kim. She’s a meticulously crafted avatar: a presentation of
the woman Kim wishes she were, or the woman she was in
late 2004, or the woman she feels pressure to seem to be.
In the social media era, many of us feel compelled
to offer up our most charming, carefree, Ashtanga-
practicing selves to the world. That presentation
can be at odds with the way our real-life
friends know us, sometimes creating a
jarring dissonance. It can be disorienting, for
instance, to watch a friend perform marital
bliss on social media when she spends half your
conversations fretting about her jerk of a husband.
But before you judge her for being a phony, think of the
pressure she must be feeling to keep up appearances.
Real Kim may need your forbearance for Screen Kim’s
behavior. Social media just isn’t the setting for the
kind of authenticity and vulnerability that’s the bedrock
of true friendship.
That knowledge will help when Screen Kim fails to
provide online “evidence” of your friendship. Author LaurenBut
Remember...
That Person
on the
Screen Is Not
Your Friend
you from London, walking
you through the Tate
Modern. Others group-text
while watching Big Little
Lies “together,” sharing
reactions in real time. We
can stream and snap our
way into each other’s lives
with next to no effort.
Of course, the existence
of all of this bridge-building
tech doesn’t mean you can
skip out on spending time
with your dearest pals IRL.
The offline touch is
especially vital when they’re
in need. Khalil Gibran
called friendship “a sweet
responsibility,” which nails
both its benefits and its
obligations. If your friend is
dealing with something
big—divorce, a death, a
troubled child, a career
shift—your job is to be with
her in person or at least
call. Yes, even if you’re
“crazy busy” or “hate thephone”: Your voice on the
other end of the line is
more powerful than any
text. (FYI, psychology
professor Albert Mehrabian
found that 38 percent of
communication about
feelings occurs through
vocal tone.) Texts, emails,
and DMs are like emotional
CliffsNotes—they give
an outline of the story, not
the full sentiment behind
it. In person or on the
phone, you can hear your
friend’s unguarded
thoughts, pauses, sighs.
Research has found that it
can take over 200 hours
together in person before
someone becomes a
close friend—and that’s
not an investment you
want to squander. Just
as you wouldn’t conduct
a romantic relationship
virtually, you can’t sustain
a friendship that way.KEEP IN MIND...
TINY MOMENTS ADD UP.
Have a minor revelation? (“I
just realized I’ve been mixing
up Jeff Daniels and Jeff
Bridges for the last decade!”)
Text her. Blips of contact are
the dabs of emotional glue that
keep your connection solid. “In
my closest friendships, we can
obsess over anything, for any
amount of time,” says Cathy
Guisewite, “Cathy” cartoonist
and author of Fifty Things That
Aren’t My Fault, a collection of
candid essays on womanhood.
“When my niece graduated
from high school, my sister
planned her party down to the
tiniest detail. She’d text me
photos of napkins as she
walked through Party City.
That’s exactly the kind of thing
we bond over.”
THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT.
Voxer lets you send quick
audio messages to a friend
that she can listen to at her
leisure, no phone call required.Mechling vacationed with a close friend’s family in Italy
a year ago; after returning home, Mechling plastered her
Facebook page with pictures. Her friend did not. “I was
shocked and hurt,” says Mechling. “Why didn’t she want to
brag about our cool vacation, and the fact that we grilled
fish together and listened to Sicilian accordion players? It
bothered me so much that I finally brought it up, and she
explained that her father didn’t like how he looked in
the photos—she was trying to protect his feelings.”
One last thing about Real Kim: It’s not
fair to make her take a back seat to your
onscreen persona. As we mine our daily lives
for content and imagine how it’ll play out on an
internet stage, we sometimes fail to be fully present
in what’s happening around us. (She’s confessing to
troubles with her boss, and you’re mentally concocting an
Instagram post about your “SUPER FUN #ladiesnight
#yum #lovemyfriends.”) But the phantom eyeballs of your
online followers aren’t nearly as important as the ones
you’re looking into across the table. So let your paella go
unphotographed occasionally—the likes you’ll garner
aren’t worth the distance you might create between you
and the people you truly hold dear.1
2
96 SEPTEMBER^2019 OPRAHMAG.COM
MASK:^ JOSE^ DEAN^
FROMTHE^ NOUN^
PROJECT.