You know their last names, their middle names. You know their pets’ names, you know their moms’ favourite colours. You know where they went to high school, or when they broke up with their first. You know their favourite TV series, you know what they do every weekend.

The question is, do you really know them?

Social media has given us a really fascinating world, a world that is at the palm of our hands, the world that operates on our own terms. In high school, many moons ago, I never had a cellphone, let alone access to the internet. I had to navigate my way in my around what it handed me. I got to meet a lot of people around my neighbourhood, some became friends, and some I still have contact with till this day.

There were some I wish I never met, but we shared spaces, so I didn’t have much of a choice. You can add bullies into the mix, although I didn’t have that problem, thanks to my big brother and older cousins. People back then liked you for who you are, there was no pretending, no persona to hide behind. The girl I was interested in gave me a hard time, I had to take her out for more than a year before she even considered herself my lady, it was hard work. The memories I had built then are timeless, it is the stuff love movies are made of.

Many years later I was introduced to technology, I had completed high school then and was a sophomore at varsity. My parents bought me a cellphone, and although I only knew my home telephone number, my eyes were firmly fixed on that small screen hoping to get a call. I didn’t have anyone to make calls to, except my parents, so carrying a heavy handset around all the time came with joys and disappointments, the thought of receiving calls in the comfort of my single bed was enough to make up for that.

Social media was still a strange planet then, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, even MySpace were still ideas. You had to leave your space to share someone else’s space. It was real socializing, it was intimidating, but it built relationships. You had to be with someone, to be with someone. We paid attention, lots of it. We looked forward to tomorrow, not knowing what to expect. At times you wished you could read someone’s status update or a tweet, just to know how they felt that morning, so you could know how to act around them. There was none of that. We had to get our hands dirty, we had to trade our egos for cohesion, our opinions for lessons, and our prejudices for experiences.

One thing I’m grateful for is that I spent the best years of my life without a Twitter or Facebook account, I did the work, I got my fingers burnt, and I paid the price. I didn’t have to block people I didn’t like, or those who disagreed with me, I had to find better ways to deal with them, and win arguments. I didn’t have to tell the world how I feel today, I had to show it. I didn’t have to count people who would “like” what I had to say, I knew them, and they knew me.

Today, we don’t put in the work required in building and maintaining relationships. We don’t have to.

Each day we make a new friend, we follow someone new, we like a stranger’s photo. Depending on circumstance, we can end the friendship, unfollow a new friend, and simply unlike a photo. All this within a blink of an eye. While growing up, to avoid someone, you had to move house, change your number, change your school, or even change the normal routes you use on a daily basis. Again, it was hard work, but relationships were long lasting then, no matter how irritating some were.

When I was first introduced to social media, I was so excited to finally get a Facebook account, the thought of making friends throughout the world was mind-blowing. I could virtually travel the continent and beyond, my imagination ran wild.

Within a short space of time I managed to amass a decent number of “friends”, I had over a hundred of them. The most popular kid in high school would be jealous of me, I thought. It felt good getting all those notifications of “friendship” confirmations. They were like little stamps of approval, they felt warm, I felt liked, hey maybe I was. I thought, again.

I tried to stay in touch with those friends, being a loyal guy that I am (add your insult here), but it became increasingly hard to keep up, seeing that I was getting more and more friends each day. The notifications, the feelings, they were addictive, and I wanted more of that. It became a numbers game, when one loses a friend, then that friend could be replaced by another friend. The term has never been so cheap. It was like trading stocks, when one is no longer serving you, then you get another one. It was after losing friends I made before the world of social media that I realised how much I got sucked in, and it was too late to get out. Facebook was becoming too much of a chore, my new friends needed assurance that I’m still there, otherwise they will also replace me with a new friend. One had to keep up, or keep out.

One day I decided to ditch this thing, I miss the human touch, the friendly conversations over a soda. The bunch of strangers on my phone screen can be demanding, they don’t give me a piece of mind, they are always there. It wasn’t long after when I heard of another social media platform.

This one is not too demanding, they said. I believed them, so I joined. Being a newbie, I had to start from scratch, they didn’t know me there. It was a fresh start, little did I know that I will be wresting with the same devil, just different platforms. I finally got the hang of it, this was something I could get used to, they were right, it is not too demanding. Friendships are not mutual there, you could choose who you want to listen to, and mute those you don’t like.

You only get a limited number of characters to say what you may, this was refreshing. The idea of saying less is what gets one to keep saying more. Twitter became a numbers game as well, but the good this is that in this platform we are unequally equal.

Social media, to some extent, has made me miss the good old ways of socializing. The hard work that goes into building relationships. Relationships are, these days, are like items on a menu. The difference is that we don’t even have to step inside a restaurant to make a selection. People polish their profiles and avatars to perfection. The list of people we see on our phone screens are like items we choose from, choose when to talk to, choose when to love, choose when to ignore, choose when you engage with, choose when to unfriend, to block to mute.

Although we still find bullies online, we now have freedom to decide how we react, no need for big brother anymore. We can block them, mute them, unfriend them, even better – switch off our devices.

I finally got to meet some of my online friends, I already knew everything about them. It felt weird, like déjà vu.