The Necessary Art of De-friending

“I friended them on Facebook.”

S — is a good friend of mine. We are talking about a person I’m casually dating, and as soon as the words are out of my mouth, S — says…

“They’re on your FB page? Lemme see!” And I hear furious clicking and then…

“Oh! This is them?” A sharp intake of breath, more clicking and then, “We have mutual friends!”

Then I hear the high-pitched notes of my worlds colliding and S – calling his mother to the computer so that she can see the person I’m dating too. Her comment is short, “Nice lookin’.”

With all of the social networking going on, not only do I struggle to keep my worlds separate. I find it necessary to ‘remove’ friends that well… really aren’t, and aren’t necessary to my network. Sometimes I send them a note and say, “Hey I’m dialing the social networking down a notch, this is just going to be a family thing.” Other times, I just press ‘remove’.

About the addition of the casual dater S—says, “What’s going to happen when you have to de-friend them? I de-friended this guy because he ticked me off and then when I saw him a couple of weeks later I realized he wasn’t so bad and that I wanted to stay connected to him.”

“That’s awkward,” I replied. “To have to friend them again, they’d have to confirm you, and then they’d know they were ‘removed’, I wouldn’t want to do that.”

Before you friend someone ask yourself, do you want them privy to family photos? Your political rants? Do you want future employers to see that popular and annoying list of 25 questions that you answered and posted in your ‘notes’ section? Is this person really a friend?

Use the social networking sites wisely, set your parameters, here is a great website that shows you how to do it on Facebook. And just some advice from your Aunt B, every so often, de-friend.

- Aunt B