You can text them!
On social media, asking for phone numbers, and the choices we have about it
The other day I read someone lamenting that they have to stay on Instagram, because they otherwise would not know what is going on with their friends. They said they wished people would text them updates.
I think a lot of people feel that way, but I wonder how necessary it is. For a couple of decades now, social media has been a place where we can track other people’s life updates, random thoughts, and see photos. We add them as “friends” on some of these sites, but is that actually true? It’s just the name for adding a contact. I was never close friends with most of my Facebook friends. These were acquaintances. Some were people I met once, some were classmates, some were people I saw around. There was everyone from family to people I couldn’t name if I just saw a photo or even met them in person again.
The thing is, you can (at least) ask people to text you updates. It won’t be the same as if they are posting every day to friends, acquaintances, and some strangers, but you could keep track of them. The reality though, is that most people we’re following online aren’t friends. Most actual friends probably can be kept up with over text, or on the phone, or in person, or some combination of these. Maybe some long catch-up emails. Perhaps some could even email you a monthly newsletter…
We’ve gotten used to knowing a lot about a lot of people. On top of everyone we actually know, a bunch of strangers, some of whom we maybe didn’t even ask to see, but are just showing up on a continuous scrolling algorithm-based feed.
I got a Facebook account when I was 16, and an Instagram whenever that came out. I used to see a ton from my friends and everyone I ever met. I added friends from the Internet at some point. There was no end to posts from people I actually knew. Nowadays though, Instagram looks extremely curated and Facebook is a ghost town supplemented by absolutely random suggested posts.
Mainstream social media isn’t the same kind of social anymore. We’re overwhelmingly pressured to be overwhelmed. It isn’t just an endless feed of posts from acquaintances; it’s companies, and influencers, and just thousands of strangers. That’s too much. Rapidly moving between emotional states is exhausting. Trying to track whether a social interaction is happening or you’re consuming media, in the same place, back to back, is exhausting. I know people still make friends on the Internet, but it can’t be the same as it was even ten years ago.
After a couple of decades of using the same platforms and getting stuck on our phones every day, it feels weird not to know what people are doing. Do we have to, though?
A few years ago, I started asking for people’s phone numbers again. Some people really don’t like SMS texting/want a desktop option, so I message them one-on-one somewhere else (often Discord). But many people were happy to trade numbers, and to answer me when I ask what’s new or how they’re doing. I didn’t ask every contact, but over time I’ve asked all or most of the people I’d truly be sad to lose contact with. No one said no, and most of them message me at least occasionally. I do once in awhile remember I someone I missed because we message infrequently, but then I do just reach out.
The first stage of me being less on Facebook was when I realized I was sharing so much partly because I didn’t want to ask any of my individual friends to listen. If fifty people liked to talk to me about what I was thinking about and going through, I didn’t have to ask anyone directly to be there for me. At some point, I learned that was both silly and kind of hurtful to my close friends. So I decided to work on talking to my friends more. Then I worked on just texting several group chats if I wanted to share a thought, instead of posting. I learned I liked taking a break from being so public. Emotional privacy turned out to feel good, and my friends actually were my friends, and were happy to hear from me and be there for me.
The next stage was probably my unwillingness to move back online during the quarantine period of the pandemic. I was still posting, but not nearly as much as I had been back in like 2015. I couldn’t do it again. I had gotten used to a life in my body, and if that was lonely, okay. I think it would have been different if I lived alone, but I didn’t, for which I am grateful.
After that, I just resented that keeping up with people should require scrolling and experiencing the emotional instability that comes with flipping between cute, tragic, cheery, miserable, funny, and all other types of emotional content for hours a day. So, what if I don’t delete it, but I also ask for phone numbers? And what if I refuse to use Facebook messenger as my main way to text people anymore? We got used to that—to using it for everything, to using this website as an address book. Even people who had not logged in for years were still using the messenger app.
A few years ago there was a day that Facebook went down completely for a few hours, and I decided that was a great opportunity to ask for contact info for those handful of people I wanted to keep up with outside of it. Since then, I realized there were other friends I hadn’t asked, and would want to keep track of, so I’m glad I haven’t deleted it all. I can still ask, and I do. Though some people have already disappeared from Facebook at this point.
I think the person who was sad about Instagram probably could delete Instagram, at least from their phone, leave it up, ignore it mostly. The trade though is that you have to actually think about who you would, push come to shove, truly miss.
It makes me think again about the video I saw, probably a year ago now, where the speaker suggested that making new friends required letting go of old acquaintances. They talked about how the advent of social media was so exciting for them as a teen, because they moved around so much and had to say goodbye completely to friends every time they moved as a child. But far later as an adult, they were feeling like they had no time to meet new people because they were trying to keep up with everyone they’d ever liked from many different moments of life.
I think that is both a beautiful thing about the age we’re in, that we can keep up with all of those people in some way, but it’s also a hindrance if we don’t realize it’s a choice. I’m happy I can log into these sites and check on people when I think of them, but I am glad I am not focused on the details of hundreds of people’s lives at the moment.
So, keeping up one-on-one and leaving Instagram would require deciding how many people you’re willing to text individually, and who you’re willing to ask about. That’s the convenient part of social media—it’s loosely and passively social; it requires a really different kind of social energy. It’s efficient. You can post once and it reaches everyone you know. You can scroll for five minutes, and at least on some sites, you could passively catch up with a hundred people. Keeping up one-on-one means actually starting and continuing conversations. It also means realizing which acquaintances are really so far out you would forget about them completely without social media, and that, kind of sadly, ultimately, it’s probably fine to forget them.
There is a grief to being less online, and to watching others disappear from social media around me. Letting go seems easier to me now, in a way, because so many people are tired of posting, so even if they are still reading, there is less to read. I feel like I am missing less not being there. There are old friends I do think of again after many years and find they haven’t posted since 2022 or before. And I didn’t notice.
It isn’t an all-or-nothing choice. Ask for numbers, keep the profile, stop logging in. Actually ask people how they are doing, what’s new. Send them photos. Invite them to send you photos. Not everyone will want to, but I many will!
I write a newsletter because it is still nice to post what’s going on with me into the world, and because there are some people who want to read it! If I wasn’t doing that, or if I decide to end the newsletters at some point, I would probably start a private newsletter—just an email to my friends every so often.
I think so many of us didn’t really worry about privacy ten years ago, or fifteen or twenty years ago. It was worth it. Now it feels like the details of our lives are often just currency for rich people. I don’t know who’s looking and I don’t know if they are my friends. As the friends/strangers/ads become one big blur, it just hasn’t felt good in a long time now.
I think in the end, it comes down to what energy we’re willing to re-route again into one-on-one catching up, and whether we can accept that it’s okay to lose touch with some people—we are a set of generations who for the first time in history can loosely keep up with so many people. And I think that’s awesome! But it is also a choice, and it’s okay to make a different one.
Thank you so much for reading!
I would love to hear any ideas this sparked or other comments you have. You can leave a public comment below, or email me privately at michaelzzaki.writes@gmail.com
email cover image by Markus Winkler https://www.pexels.com/@markus-winkler-1430818/
I've also found that the once a year (or a few times a year) in-person catch up with people who live far away or you don't see as much for whatever reason, really does maintain and promote that friendship more than seeing constant updates online
Relate to so much of this.
I asked for a lot of people's numbers before deleting FB and IG, and the process was a very beneficial reflection on who I would be sad not to have a way to contact, and couldn't realistically contact another way (like i didn't ask numbers from a acquaintances who have close mutuals i do have in my contacts: this was mostly to avoid neurotypical overinterpreting of 'can i have your number' as far more intimate than a fb add). And since then, I've been disappointed in myself about how little texting I'm doing. I miss people and I want to know what's going on with each other and I do nothing about it. There's a lot more social nuance in texting. For example sharing about a problem to an individual feels like an implied request a lot more than a collective post does. And texting is a lot more time-aware than posting (what if someone keeps notifications on when they're sleeping?) And direct communication is overall more intimate and vulnerable: which is the worst and best thing about it