Poll: Facebook friends

[David1961]

Most of my Facebook "friends" are old high school classmates, former coworkers, relatives, and friends of friends. Many of these "friends" I have either never met or not seen in decades. Thought it would be fun to start a poll to see what percentage of your Facebook friends you have seen in the last 5 years.

 

[Sojourner]

I tend to be pretty selective when adding friends on Facebook, so I have under 100 FB friends, about half of whom I have seen and spent time with over the past 5 years. I don't really get the concept of average, social users of Facebook having thousands of FB friends, many of whom would not even rise to the level of "fleeting acquaintance" in real life.

 

[Tadpole]

I have a total of 9 friends across two accounts. Two are childhood friends, one is a cousin, and the rest are internet people I have chatted with since the early 2000s but I have met only one of them. I last saw the two childhood friends in the late 60s. I last saw the cousin in 1990. I met the one internet person for lunch in 2010 so he is only one I have seen in this century. One other person, an old friend of my husband's, was a friend for a short while. I unfriended him soon after when I figured out he just friended people to push his political view. Two things that will get a person dropped from my list are chauvinism (disrespectful photos) and linking other people's posters. I hate the poster format of communication.

 

[2017ish]

I actually don't know. I think I have a fair number of facebook friends, as I just add whoever asks on the 2 or 3 times a year I get onto the site--and I've been on the site far longer than most people. Excluding relatives, almost certainly over 80% [have not been seen in the past five years in person]--and maybe over 80% [not seen] even with relatives.

Edited to correct my misreading of the poll question.

 

[aja8888]

I go on Facebook about once per month then ask myself why am I doing this? I think I have about 10 friends, most of which are close family.

 

[Ronstar]

I have seen 46 of my 54 Facebook friends or 85%

 

[harley]

I have very few fb friends. Some family, and others are old friends from high school or college or neighborhoods where I once lived. I mostly maintain these friendships on fb so I can find out when somebody I used to know dies. Other than that we don't really talk. So my answer is 0-20%. Probably about 5%.

 

[Meadbh]

Made me look! I currently have 85 FB friends, of whom I have seen 59 (69%) within the past 5 years (including some forum members!). I have a very far flung family and FB is a great way for us to keep in touch. I've also linked up with some old school friends, which has led to fun reunions. I am quite selective about the friend requests I submit and accept and I cull my list periodically based on superficiality of the connection or annoying posts.

 

[aaronc879]

I have seen 27 out of 32 of my "friends" in the last 5 years or ~84%.

 

[audreyh1]

Well, I screwed up my answer. It's way more than 80% as we haven't been on Facebook five years and we generally only add people we have actually met in person.

 

[rodi]

I have few friends on facebook. I'm on facebook with the exclusive purpose of stalking my children to make sure they aren't posting stuff they'll regret. I've already had to intercede several times when they posted links to you tube videos that were profane or offensive.

I do have a few folks in Italy that I'm friends with on facebook - cousins of my husband. But I saw them this summer. Their posts let me practice my Italian reading and when I comment I get to practice my Italian writing...

 

[frayne]

I use FB primarily for posting photos of my grandkids so family and friends in far off places can see them and keep in touch. FB, like any other form of communication is what you make it. I kind of get a kick out of people running it down, they just don't know how to use it.

 

[Sunset]

I have FB accounts.
I don't use them at all, maybe once per year I've logged in ??

 

[panacea]

I hate FB. I made the mistake of accepting most friend requests and it got out of control with stupid comments and content. Eventually I terminated my account... and I'm a much happier person. If I could do it over again I would carefully manage my friends and just keep it to a few good friends and a select family. Oh, my answer to the poll was 0% that I've seen in the last 5 years.

 

[Marita40]

I hate Facebook myself. I opened an account for the sole purpose of looking at others' sites occasionally. There's nothing on my site. I accepted a couple friends and then stopped when I realized how FB works. I have a fairly long list of friend requests that I've completely ignored. Half of them I don't know and a good chunk of them are former students half my age. No thanks.

Very few of my friends use FB. If they do it tends to be kept in their family, for sharing photos and the like.

 

[48Fire]

Many of these "friends" I have never met.

Why have friends on Facebook that you have never met?

 

[Marita40]

I want to add that I find FB downright creepy. Occasionally "People you May Know" pop up who I really don't want to see again and I feel like I'm being stalked. For example, a man who I had some run ins a few years ago (business, not romantic) and who I ended up loathing occasionally appears in that list. Why? I have no idea how this works. On other occasions when I log in I have no idea who the "People You May Know" are. Just weird all around. I'm sure if I were a regular user and had happy experiences with FB I wouldn't get this creeped-out feeling from it. I am also a very private, introverted type and FB appalls me on that level too.

 

[Tallman4123]

56 total "friends". 35 are family; 21 are friends. I've seen 54 of 56 (95%) in the past 5 years; 41 in the past 12 months.

When I first joined fb I ended up with over 300 "friends" (my own misguided enthusiasm largely to blame) and definitely found it frustrating and occasionally troubling and/or creepy. Decided to whittle my contacts down to the current level. I've put privacy controls on my fb site that make it very difficult for people to find or view my page.

I rarely post, but use the site especially to see pics of my grandchildren and the children of my extended family. I love fb for that reason and dislike it for nearly everything else. For me, the good outweighs the annoying.

 

[Sarah in SC]

I have 495, had to look to see the exact number. I would say that many of them I've met through our more recent travels, so easily I've seen more than half of them in the past 5 years. But the 20-30 from childhood/teen years? Nope.

I love reading the different perspectives from folks around the world instead of just seeing what would be local news and opinion for me. Although I do wish my language skills were better for the folks in Peru, and Mongolia, and a couple in Russia.

And nice to see what new adventures folks are up to, even if I discovered just the other day that a honeymooning couple from Australia on our rally in 2013, just had their SECOND kid!! No more rallies for them!

 

[audreyh1]

We made sure that none can post on our timeline! They can comment on one of our posts. This keeps our timeline very clean. I've seen so much clutter on other people's timelines. Some seem to be only what "friends" have posted.

Also, only friends of friends can ask to friend, and if we don't know these people we don't accept their friend request.

It's very useful for what we do with it. We had specific goals for joining, and it has delivered. It's a great way to keep up with our nature clubs and our neighbors.

 

[RonBoyd]

When I first "joined" Facebook, I figured maybe a dozen Friends would be added. It quickly grew to fifty... then 100 and now is at 146. This despite my best efforts to keep the list to "important" folks. I have not added anyone in perhaps two years by being very strict in vetting candidates. Still finding the number was 146 (as a result of this poll) surprised me... who'd a thunk I could round up that many people considered close enough to be called a friend.

Because we travel so much, we see most of them (90%?) quite regularly.

 

[David1961]

Why have friends on Facebook that you have never met?

Generally, we either have mutual friends or we have a similar interest/hobby.
Several are spouses or children of distant relatives. Some I "met" on a Facebook group and based on our posts, just became friends that way.
I have become more careful who I become friends with though.

 

[RonBoyd]

I have never "met" anyone from this Forum. Nevertheless, I would not be afraid to "Friend" any of you. I have no desire to but would not consider it unusual or strange if it did happen.

 

[athena53]

Two things that will get a person dropped from my list are chauvinism (disrespectful photos) and linking other people's posters. I hate the poster format of communication.

I hate posters/pictures, too. I have some contacts who seem to spend all day reposting pictures of flowers, bunnies, kitties, sunsets, etc. with sappy sentiments, and clicking Like on other posts or pages. I can count on one hand the number of times I've shared a post, and I never click on "Like". If it's interesting enough I'll comment. If you want some great reasons not to Like, say Amen and name a state that doesn't have "e" in its name, check this article.

Don't click 'like' on Facebook again until you read this

To get back to the OT: I have 245 friends. Many are former coworkers and a large number of those are in India, Switzerland and other far-flung areas. I may never see them in person again. Others are former HS classmates- it's a good group and getting back in touch with them gave me the guts to go to the 45th reunion (HS years not that great). I had such a good time I'm going to the 45th later this year. Another group is relatives all over the US- I would have lost touch with many of them without FB even though I'm a good letter-writer.

I've disconnected from only two people. One did nothing but post awful, artery-clogging recipes (Millionaire Spaghetti Pie, e.g. ). The other, even though I thought we were similarly intelligent in grade school/HS, is HIGHLY emotional over one particular issue and will not employ reason (or respond to it) in discussions. I felt much better after I disconnected from her.

 

[hnzw_rui]

I don't have a lot of Facebook "friends". All of my FB friends are either family/relatives or high school classmates. The relatives, I get to see whenever we go on vacation to the Philippines so that's 50% of my FB friends right there. The other 10+% are my best friends and close friends from HS.