The “Friend” You Only Spent 5 Minutes With

You are at a coffee shop having a cup of hot latte with your friend Tim.

You catch up on work and discuss some ideas that you had since you last met. Then, a random guy walks to your table and says hi to Tim.

Tim instantly recognizes the guy and greets him. The guy is Albert who works at Tim’s office.

Tim and Albert talk about work for a few minutes, and you listen to them talk about unfamiliar projects and people.

Albert looks at his watch and notices that he is running late. He excuses himself, tells you it was nice to meet you, and leaves.

After you finish your coffee, you head back home and casually browse the Internet. Then, your phone buzzes. Someone called Albert wants to add you on Facebook and Instagram.

That’s the Albert from the coffee shop earlier today. You barely knew Albert. You’re not sure if you want to give him access to your Facebook and Instagram posts, but you realize that he bothered to look you up. Since you’re a friendly person, you accept his requests. Congrats, you just made a new friend!

After you accept Albert’s requests, you open Facebook. First post: Albert uploaded a new profile picture. The picture has a stunning view of the mountains. You think it’s a good picture, so you like it.

The next thing you see is a notification saying that Albert liked your profile picture.

Over the next few weeks, you receive a few comments from Albert, and you like his comments to acknowledge that you read them. You start seeing more updates from Albert. Albert changed his job. Albert moved to a new city. Albert got engaged. Albert got married.

Your Facebook and Instagram feeds now show you every update that Albert has. Every day, you see his commute, his desk, and his dinner. You know Albert so well that he became your go-to conversation topic with Tim.

The 5 minutes you spent with Albert turned into 10 minutes per week for about 6 months. That’s 4 hours of your life devoted to someone you only met for 5 minutes and probably will never see again. Albert is not the only “friend” you have. You probably have at least 10 “friends” like Albert. These people are eating up at least 80 hours a year, the equivalent of two full work-weeks.

One day you see a post of Albert’s bumper-to-bumper commute. You pause for a minute and ask yourself, “why am I looking at this? I don’t even know this person. Don’t I have anything better to do in life?” You could be following the world news, learning a new skill, exercising, volunteering, or doing anything.

That’s when the revelation hits you, and you decide to go on an unfollowing spree. You open your friends list and try to unfriend Albert. Facebook suggests unfollowing him so that you stay friends. You say, “fine. I’ll unfollow him if this stops me from seeing his stupid posts.” You hit the unfollow button. Then you see your “friend” Alice. Unfollow! Ahmed. Unfollow!! Akash. Unfollow!!! You spend the next 30 minutes unfollowing all the A’s in your life. You feel powerful. You feel unstoppable.

When you’re done cleaning and your adrenaline falls back to normal levels, you open your Facebook feed to see how it looks. The first post you see is by your good friend Tim. You almost forgot that Tim was on Facebook with all that junk that used to fill up your feed.

Even though you may not realize it, the people whom you have shallow relationships with take over the ones you care about on the social networks. You can easily become a better friend by giving more attention to the ones who matter.

Thank you for reading this. If I am just a “friend” and am distracting you, please unfriend me and follow me on Medium or join my mailing list.

Originally published at https://www.mlngd.com on August 10, 2019.