Coping With The Loss of a “Friend”
Q. What is the appropriate response when you discover that you have been “de-friended” from a social media network? I’m not talking about random people from my dorm floor — but former close friends or family members. I’m not an over-poster, so these people are trying to send me a ”message,” right? It’s happened on two occasions and it is driving me crazy.
A. The appropriate responses are shock and disbelief. Followed by denial, righteous indignation, guilt, depression, and finally, acceptance. Once you’ve hit that last stage of grief and have moved past your paranoid idea that they’re sending you a “message,” you’ll be able to process the idea that what seems like an unfathomable affront to you, may have been a casual de-friending for them.
Let’s be honest, how long did it even take you realize that you had fewer friends, and then to figure out who had gone missing? You probably spent more time tracking down the former friends than you did communicating with them in the past month. People grow apart in real life, so it’s reasonable to expect the same thing to happen online. Sure one of them might be family, but you’re only obligated to love family, not like them. Clearly these were not particularly that great of “friends,” so cut your losses, and enjoy the fact that you no longer have to go through the motion of “liking” their excessive vacation photos and self-agrandizing updates.
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