Lilly’s Blog: If Two Girls Hang Out & No One Puts it On Facebook, Did They Really Hang Out?
I’ve always envied girls with loud friendships. These are the girls in middle school with cryptic inside jokes, matching best friend necklaces and VIP-only sleepovers. These are the girls who look like they are always having fun together and always happy. In high school, look-at-us friendships go viral.
Scroll through a typical teenager’s Facebook newsfeed and you will see countless photo albums. Facebook albums, usually made by girls, are a perfect way of making friendships heard. From headshots of themselves with their “besties” to candid shots taken at a party, pictures on Facebook do more than allow girls to reminisce. The pictures publicize just how fabulous their friendships are. You can look but can’t touch.
I have no issue with girls who turn up the volume of their friendships online. I don’t sit at home, box of chocolate in hand, weeping as I click through Facebook albums, promise. Rather I worry about the significance of posting picture after picture of friends online.
Why do girls feel compelled to provide visual proof of their relationships? It is as though if pictures of it are not posted online the next day, the party did not happen. Any given moment is inconsequential unless it is documented. It troubles me that, starting in middle school, a friendship is only worth as much as the noise it produces.
My brothers have often expressed to me how baffled they are by the paparazzi-like frenzy girls go into when their friends are around. Like me, they would much rather just be with friends and be fully present in the moment instead of playing journalist and planning tomorrow’s Facebook headlines.
The pressure to be popular is so intense for teenage girls that they take matters into their own hands and meticulously document each shared moment for the world to see. My mom always tells me not to text around other people because it takes me out of the moment. I can’t help but think that girls’ efforts to make friendships heard actually cheapen the sanctity of the moments shared by best friends. I think it’s time we take a cue from the word “best” and just…be fully present.
I feel the same way.
But sometimes there’s this feeling pulling at my gut when I’m hanging out with friends that says “we HAVE to take pictures”.
I have a Facebook, but I really wish I didn’t. I get upset too easily. If I didn’t have one, I wouldn’t worry as much as I do.
Facebook is unhealthily addicting, and I have to learn the hard way.
Thanks for another good post, Lilly!
Lilly, As usual, you observe and articulate what so many of us notice, get irrated by, but are never quite able to put a finger on it. I couldn’t agree with your mom more – so many of us lose those precious moments to the never ending pressure to be instantaneously linked in to anyone and everyone. Bravo!
Wow! I never noticed it before! But you are completely right. Their seems to be a silent competition between girls to see who has the best friendships. I see girls all the time who take their cameras to every single sleep-over, party, or just days when they hang out, take hundreds of photos, and then make them into albums on Facebook for their friends to tag themselves in! Their must be some silent code written in a girl’s rule book explaining this whole fantastic phenomenon, one that completely flies over my head. What a great job of thinking out of the box on this one!
Thank you, JS. I’m glad you enjoyed the blog
This is such a great observation. I never really thought about it before, but you are so right! There is so much that happens in between all of the seconds that it took to pose for the picture. And sometimes it’s not all rosy. I appreciate your thoughts, articulated so clearly. Let’s have authentic relationships that don’t need an audience!
Hi Sara,
Thank you for your comment. Authentic relationships without an audience? Wow, what a simple and fantastic way to put it.
Thanks for reading,
Lillly
I love it! Thanks for writing. I’m an adult woman and I notice the same phenomenon with a lot of my grown female friends who may not have had “loud friendships” in high school.