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Unfriending for Sanity

May 16, 2011, 8:00 am

By Ryan Cordell

sanity_signA few weeks ago, I decided to take the word “friend” seriously in regards to my Facebook account. Looking through my friends list, I realized that my “friends” included actual friends and close family members; along with distant cousins; acquaintances; colleagues; folks I met once at a conference; folks I barely spoke to when we attended high school together; and even folks I only know through another social network, Twitter. I should add that my friends list did not include students; my policy has long been that I do not friend students on Facebook, in part to avoid the “creepy treehouse” phenomenon that Jason wrote in an earlier ProfHacker post. I also keep my privacy settings at “Friends only,” so that my status updates and pictures aren’t made available to students through those of my colleagues who do friend their students.

I realize that, for many people, a Facebook friend differs substantially from a “real” friend. Indeed, I’ve heard my students use the term “Facebook friend” as a rough synonym for “acquaintance”: e.g. “She’s a friend of mine—well, she’s at least a Facebook friend.” Many people maintain a wide circle of acquaintance on Facebook, and tailor their use of the service accordingly. Many of my colleagues foster deep, ongoing professional relationships through Facebook, which is a wonderful use of the service.

I wasn’t doing that, however. I was using Facebook as a personal network, despite the fact that my network extended far beyond the personal. When I thought carefully about how I was using social networks, I realized—or, perhaps, I reasserted—two things:

  1. I don’t have to friend everyone who asks. This might seem self-evident, but I realized that I was friending everyone who sent me a request, even if I barely knew them or wasn’t genuinely interested in (re)connecting with them. I was doing this, mostly, to avoid insulting anyone or appearing aloof. However, I would often end up hiding these people’s updates, which means I wasn’t actually networking with them. I decided to remove these faux friends, and to make real decisions about friend requests in the future. From now on, I will not feel compelled to friend someone because I took a class with them in high school. Some people use Facebook for class reunions, but I’m not interested in doing that.
  2. I can separate my personal and professional worlds. This one is, I will admit, a little tricky. I have colleagues whom I consider friends, and so those relationships bridge these two worlds. However, I realized that I use Twitter primarily for professional communication, and Facebook almost exclusively to post personal updates, including pictures and video of my family. Frankly, I can’t imagine that many of the people who were on my Facebook friends list would care about what I post there. What’s more, I realized that I was hesitant to post certain things—a lament, say, about a bad day at work—for fear of who might see it. I decided to remove purely professional contacts from my Facebook friends.

Ultimately, I cut my Facebook friends list by half. Doing so has slowed my Facebook news feed drastically—a change I’ve appreciated. If any of my distant acquaintances noticed the change—which, if they were ignoring my updates as I was theirs, is unlikely—they haven’t written any angry emails letting me know. Honestly, this change has allowed me to spend less time on Facebook; I go there to post pictures of my kids, or to post the occasional personal update. In my case the time saved probably isn’t too significant—I’ve never been a heavy Facebook user—but I’ve been surprised how much mental space this purging has created.

As social networks proliferate, we will have to make choices about where to spend our time and where not to. I made the choice to separate Twitter and Facebook: one for professional contacts, and the other for genuinely personal contacts. What about you? How do you manage your social networks? Tell us about the choices you’ve made in the comments.

[Creative Commons licensed photo by Flickr user storyvillegirl.]

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  • http://sarahwerner.net Sarah Werner

    I, too, use Twitter primarily as a professional network and Facebook as a way of connecting with personal friends. But since many of my friends are also professional colleagues, and many of them aren’t on Twitter, keeping those spheres entirely separate doesn’t really work for me. There are things I post to FB that connect to my professional interests; for instance, I’ve used that space to get readers for a special issue I was editing and to share program information. There are also professional-sphere folks who know me through my scholarship who have friended me on FB, and while I don’t want them to see pictures of my kids, or to hear me whining about whatever, I do have a professional profile that I’d like to keep in front of them.

    So the way I’ve handled it is to create a privacy setting on FB for “work”–by default they don’t see all the personal stuff I post, but when I want to share something mored widely with those contacts, I can change that post’s settings to include the “work” list. It’s been a good solution for me–easy to manage with no oversharing and no contact loss.

  • sarajean

    I have two Facebook accounts. 

    My “personal” account has most privacy settings set to “friends only,” but “friends of friends” may make friend requests.  On this account, I only accept friend requests from family members and from people I know socially, and my posts are generally family pictures.

    My “professional” account is more visible.  On this account, I only accept friend requests from people with whom I have (or am likely to have) professional contact, and my posts are related to professional topics.

  • cfit9931

    I too have two accounts and separate personal social networking from professional. I use Facebook for the former and LinkedIN for the latter. My use of Twitter is minimal at this point, but I will likely associate it with my LinkedIN account — not with Facebook.

  • fiona

    Do you actually “defriend” people or just put them on “hide”? I put them on “hide,” out of a strange and irrational feeling that it somehow would be rude to defriend someone I don’t actually know anyway. I don’t use Twitter or LinkedIn, but I’m an ole Luddite. I like to read books on Kindle.

  • vandoesborgh

    I remove (“hide”) people who are not close friends or family from my news feed. I can still “broadcast” my status to everyone who is a friend, but in my experience, I can’t get a serious conversation going from my statuses, even when I know that some of the people I’d expect to see it see my other stuff. For me Facebook is about talking about the weather and coming up with witty responses to other peoples’ statuses. It has never turned into much else for me. I do use private groups to communicate with college committees and family.

  • http://twitter.com/lisejaillant Lise Jaillant

    I’m not sure that this distinction between “private” and “professional” life is still relevant today.

  • ilevine

    Interesting post. Taming social networks is a tricky business. I find that many friends/colleagues are using Facebook and Twitter DMs to get in touch with me and the use of email is waning. I’m also on LinkedIn. There creates an expectation that you will respond across all social media. 

  • electronicmuse

    Radical idea. Don’t do any of this social networking unless you actually have comething to sell. That’s what mass media do well-sell. By the way, you can still use digital technology privately to produce something you can sell: book, music recording, video, etc.

    Then with the time saved, have lunch with a “real” friend every now and then. Try it, you’ll like it.

  • http://profiles.google.com/2cksyme Chris Syme

    I do basically the same–Facebook for family and friends, no work. Twitter for professional. I did a major cutback on FB in January. Also, I have decided to “hide all posts” from people rather than unfriend them. Works the same, but they still show up as a friend.  

  • mnogojazyk

     I’ve unfriended a few people in my time. A few persons post and post and post so that it takes me quite a while to read their posts or scroll past them to family and, for want of a better word, real friends. I’ve unfriended a few people because I began to read material they were posting that I didn’t like.

    As I look down my list of Facebook friends, it’s now mostly family, real friends, religious colleagues, and a few work colleagues. Most of my professional colleagues are on my LinkedIn page. Hardly anyone else any more and consequently much more time for other things.

  • llouis

    My most recent social networking management task was unliking some pages that I realized were either posting updates that turned out to be completely uninteresting or (in more instances) were spamming my Facebook feed.  Organizations and companies should think more carefully about how many times a day they post to Facebook.  The line between informative and irritating is thin indeed.

  • dmoser5

    My use of social media came from another side of who I am; as a musician, I was very active with MySpace in its early days. As I began doing more virtual performances in Second Life, I developed a “fan page” on FB for the avatar, as well as for me. I have never made any secret about my performances, so I discovered that some of my “professional” friends were finding my avatar and wanting to friend me and the lines starting getting a little blurry.

    I have maintained the FB page for mostly professional, sometimes personal, connections. LinkedIn has been almost exclusively professional. Twitter has bifurcated with an account for my music news and the other for academic postings. I am gradually weaning the professional followers over to an almost exclusively professional Twitter persona. Academia.edu remains entirely professional. 

    As I find myself researching more and more of the intersection of these networks, the distinctions are becoming easier to maintain and it IS a liberating feeling.

  • http://twitter.com/DFrazee David Frazee

    I’m an advocate of setting your fried number cap at a reasonable point, say 100, or whatever works for you. Then, once you reach that number, don’t add another friend unless you eliminate one from your friend pool!

  • dkompare

    After a few years of enjoying and then getting frustrated with inane status updates and (especially) dubious privacy policies, I’ve basically been off of Facebook for about a year. I still maintain an account (to lock down my name there), and friends, but I only ever check when an e-mail notification seems pressing (e.g., someone is coordinating a group event or question). This happens about once a month. Other than that, no Facebook for me. I haven’t missed it at all.

    Twitter is another animal entirely. I’ve found Twitter to be immensely useful for professional contacts, and as a conduit to my students (who increasingly choose to follow one or both of my Twitter accounts) for intriguing links. Yes, I’ll indulge in some hashtag games on occasion, but I keep things mostly work-related there. Still, I’m about topped out on the number of people I can productively follow (currently around 700), and often pare down accounts I find redundant or annoying.

    The expectation that we should be on every, or even any, social network, is a significant weakness or our era. Yes, you need to find a balance, and some continuous contacts are probably necessary. But it shouldn’t overwhelm your life.

  • fiona

    Do people generally feel they must read everything posted by their Facebook “friends”? I just read what’s on the screen whenever I check in, and figure that if there’s something I must know, someone will send me a private message. But, because I’m an academic who always did all the homework, it’s hard to decide deliberately NOT to do the reading. I’m working on it. 

  • bealison

    noneed to “lock down” name: FB allows profiles from folks with the same names (unlike email). 

  • drnels

    Doesn’t work, though, when the people who mean the most to you don’t live near enough to have lunch together.  That’s why I love Facebook and Twitter.  I know more now about the people who mean most to me than I did ten years ago when I only had email, snail mail, and the phone.

  • drnels

    I’m one who doesn’t distinguish between private and professional, either.  I have one account on the major sites, and people from all parts of my life are on each.

  • http://profiles.google.com/kurt.sampson Kurt Sampson

    Another option is to maintain good friend lists, and privacy settings that properly reflect this. This way you can still “friend” folks who are really acquaintances, and have your fBook network recognize the difference. You never know when you might run into a past acquaintance, or vaguely remember one who you wish you could get a hold of for whatever reason. Having them in your fBook network can facilitate these unexpected situations. Of course the drawback is that it is more work for you to set up and maintain good friends lists and privacy settings; especially with fBook changing their privacy options so frequently.

  • trvb72

    The key is friends lists.  Here’s what I do (until FB goes through another periodic change):  I have two friends lists that I created.  The main one is for the vast majority of my friends, and the second one is for a few dozen who constantly post.  If you want, put everyone in the main one to begin with, including fan pages that you’d also like to get updates from.  Now, every time you log in, click on the “Most Recent” tab at the top and there’s your main friend list that you click on.  This way, you get all updates from those that you want, and they haven’t been chosen for you by FB.

    The news feed “thinks” it’s showing you posts you’ll want to see, but far too often, it’s just populated by the people who are on my second list.  I don’t know how it thinks I want to see them. 

    I periodically check the second list, but not often.

    I add every new friend to the main list, and if I find that they post too often I just move them to the other list.

    Someone commented that if it’s important enough, they’ll email you.  I don’t find that to be the case anymore.  It’s changing, and this is how we’re communicating.

    During the last FB change, I thought my ability to view by friends list had gone away and I really did think I’d have to finally defriend people, but they just moved it.  I don’t like to be defriended so I don’t do it to anyone else.

    The drawback of this is that my FB app on my phone doesn’t allow viewing by friends lists, so I just don’t check it on my phone.

  • blendedlibrarian

    SPARC already makes available boilerplate legal text that any author can add to the publisher’s agreement to make the agreement more favorable to the author – or at least allow you to retain your copyright or add versions to the repository. 

    http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/addendum.shtml

    You hopefully have at least on librarian at your institution who is familiar with SPARC, author rights, negotiating with publishers, the SHERPA site so you can find individual publisher rights policies, etc. If not, your library should send at least one librarian to the Scholarly Publishing Roadshow mentioned by cybrarian_ca

  • switzi

    I didn’t see a reply to your question about the difference between posting in a repository vs on your personal website.  A university repository provides the author with a persistent url (often called a “handle”) that does not change.  If you keep your personal website with the same url forever, then there is no difference but if you move it to a new web application, the odds are that your article will have a new url.  Anyone linking to your old url may find a broken link.  Also web crawlers/search engines such as Google, Google Scholar are automatically finding the items in university repositories where for a personal website they may find it but again they may not.

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