By 6:30 p.m. EST, my best friends and I have already discussed the following topics at length via a group text message: Heather’s blind date (complete with furtive live updates from the bathroom at Delfina); Fia’s deliciously buttery croissant; the first sentence of Mina’s cover letter; Jackie’s newest woodworking project; the little kids sledding down my snow-covered street.
The five of us have been close since college, but our friendship has become even stronger ever since I moved to New York City almost a year and a half ago — which seems odd, since that’s when we stopped living six blocks apart and started living 3,000 miles away.
We’re constantly bombarded with alarmist pop-science articles about how social media is making us lonely, insane, and “alone together,” essentially turning us all into cyborgs who’ve replaced love with Instagrammed banh mis. “We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection,” Sherry Turkle decreed in the New York Times last spring. “We are tempted to think that our little ‘sips’ of online connection add up to a big gulp of real conversation. But they don’t. Email, Twitter, Facebook, all of these have their places — in politics, commerce, romance, and friendship. But no matter how valuable, they do not substitute for conversation.”
I disagree. It’s time to update the dictionary’s definition of conversation, which is “the informal exchange of ideas by spoken words.” Why is speaking necessarily more crucial to the exchange of ideas than typing? The authors of these articles prioritize IRL interaction over virtual conversation, and they’re afraid of that premium fading with our generation. A digital dystopia in which emoticons replace emotions depresses me as much as the next person who has read Super Sad True Love Story and A Visit From the Goon Squad. But my experience over the past year and a half has taught me to cherish, not fear, my reliance on technology.
In order to prove the strength of our bicoastal best friendship, I recently scanned through our various forms of virtual communicado — text, Gchat, email, Facebook, Twitter, et al — to find the “best of” moments that have sustained us since I moved away. Much of it is embarrassingly trivial: sassy comebacks to catcalls, a recipe for a sandwich cake, a photo text asking if a menacing-looking bump was a hive or a bug bite. It’s true that friendships aren’t cemented through flippant Facebook statuses and Foursquare check-ins, but who’s to say that the proper formula for friendship is a series of poignant conversations conducted within arms reach? My SF friends are the first people I call after a traumatic run-in with an ex-boyfriend, but also the first people I text to say I can’t stop licking the sauce off my empty spaghetti bowl; it’s the possibility for both intimate and utterly mundane communication that has strengthened our friendship despite the distance.
Occasionally I do wonder if being in such a serious LDFR (Long Distance Friend Relationship) has made it more difficult to feel present in New York. There are nights where I’m out and enjoying myself in meatspace but also having a blast texting my friends about what they’re up to on the other side of the country. We’re virtually together all of the time, despite being physically very much apart, and in some ways I rely on my friends more than I did when we all lived in the same neighborhood. But I can’t imagine moving backwards and growing distant due to logistics; technology makes it possible to defy geographical boundaries. It’s wise to be aware of being overly dependent on screens and status updates. But we shouldn’t be so wary of raising up virtual chatting to the same level as face-to-face communication. Take it from me and the best friends who live inside my iPhone.
