Remember several years – say 10 or 15 – when it took a lot of effort to stay in touch with people? You had to pick up the phone (a landline at that) and call them. You had to write a note and put it in the mail. You sent a Christmas card (not an e-card but a real envelope with a stamp). But if you lived any distance from folks – and sometimes even if you lived in the same town – it was easy to lose touch as life got busy and time passed.
Fast forward to today where everyone is just an email, text, webchat, LinkedIn message, Google+ hangout, Facebook chat or tweet away. It’s much, much easier to stay connected. In fact, you find yourself connected to people you barely know or maybe don’t even like that much.
But you have to admit it’s great – and easy – for staying up to date on all that goes on in the lives of people you know and care about. So, last week when someone told me about being unfriended on Facebook, it got me thinking about how that one action really demonstrates the power of our connectivity. Had this happened 15 years, it would have gone something like this: fewer phone calls, a missed Christmas or birthday card and eventually this person would have slipped from the other person’s life – not unnoticed but just in a more gradual way. A Facebook unfriending is abrupt and calculated. In this day of technology, it may very well be the ultimate insult.
Have you been unfriended on Facebook? How did it make you feel?