How do you define a friend?

How do you define a friend?

This morning as I was reading through my latest Facebook feed, a post from an old neighbor caught my eye. She was lamenting that screens are taking the place of personal contact and fears for the future of “friends”. I am a facebooker; I admit it. I read it at home via the web off and on through the day. I read it from my phone when I’m out and about and bored. I make a point to visit the profile’s of friends that are having a major event (illness, birth, important meeting, etc) in their lives. I post photos, interesting (to me) links, and the occasional observation. While I don’t play games, I do know of people who find playing online games with friends to be fun.

Facebook for me is a way to stay in “light touch” with many friends and acquaintances from many varied facets of my life. Family, childhood, college, grad school, work, homeschool group, Pine Lake, kids’ music and more.

I was never a huge fan on talking on the phone, so for me, this and email are wonderful tools for helping me to stay connected with people, near and far. As far as personal contact goes, I find that the online tools have done more to help me create bonds and to participate in “personal contact” far more than they have taken the place of or discouraged it.

By getting to know people and staying in touch online, I am much more likely to join up or seek out human contact because of our online connections. I find it much easier to walk into a group knowing there will be a few friendly faces and having some basis for “conversation starters” gleamed from general online interactions.

To get back to the original question, “How do you define a friend?”, I like to believe as with my list of friends on Facebook, there is no one size fits all definition. In general, I perhaps can say that a person is my friend because we share a common interest. From there, our connection may grow deeper or wider, but our friendship may remain as that singe thread of common interest.

This post is part of the Post A Day 2011.