We live in a time of constant communication, no matter where in the world our friends are or how long it’s been since we’ve seen them. As long as they stay on social media, we never have to lose touch, but it’s social media, that strengthens friendships or makes them shallower. According to anthropologists, the highest number of people you can maintain a meaningful relationship ranges from 100 to 200, depending on how social you are. Many of us have a lot more social media connections than that. Friendship researchers divide friendships into three categories. Active, Dormant and Commemorative. Friendship is active if you are regularly in touch with this person. If you feel you can call on them for emotional support, and if you pretty much know what’s going on with their lives. A dormant friend is someone you have a history with, but with who you haven’t spoken to you in a while. But if you were in the same town as them, you call him up and it wouldn’t be weird. And then a commemorative friend is someone important to you earlier time in your life, but you don’t expect to see or hear from them. Maybe ever again. You remember them fondly, but they remain firmly in the past. Or, they would have before the advent of social media. You can see what your childhood friend thinks about politics. You can get a happy birthday message from your old teammate. As you grow older, more and more of your active friendships will become dormant or commemorative. That’s because friendships naturally fade as people grow up. According to the American time use survey, young people aged 15 to 19 spend the most time socializing per day, while older adults have less time to spend with their friends. One study found that the more people move, the more willing they were to get rid of their objects. They also reported being more willing to cut social ties. We suggest that people who move a lot see their friendships as more disposable. Technology offers us a way to extend the life span of these friendships, even long-distance ones with minimal effort, but some of those friendships aren’t living. It’s more like they are on life support. Any contact at all is the bare minimum of what it takes to keep a friendship alive. So, if you write on someone’s Facebook wall or comment on their Instagram, you’re doing a form of friendship maintenance. Social media allows you to maintain more friendships but more shallowly. But if you just focus on your closest friends, it’s also a tool that can help you deep in your relationships. The more platforms friends used to communicate in addition to seeing each other in person. Social media can both strengthen the friendships you care about and keep some relationships alive. Friendships are uniquely flexible kinds of relationships. No clear expectations or obligations. This makes it easy to drop them when things get busy, but it also means that a period of dormancy doesn’t mean that the friendship is over. Middle age Americans found that many still considers themselves to be friends with people they have been in touch with for a long time, but they felt like they could pick right back up where they left off. So maybe that’s the biggest gift the Internet gives us a place to find our friends when we’re ready to pick up where we left off. When you’re ready, your friends are there in your pocket, waiting for you to reconnect.

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