How I stay connected to friends without social media

I’ve been off Instagram for almost a year now, and I don’t feel like my friendships have suffered at all.

I went back and forth about whether to delete my Instagram for over two years. The biggest hurdle for me was how I was going to keep up with all of my friends without social media. I’ve been off Instagram and most forms of social media for almost a year now, and I don’t feel like my friendships have suffered at all. 

Here are a few things that have helped me keep up with friends (They are all really obvious, but I find that the simpler things are, the more likely you are to do them).

1. Realize who your friends are

Have you ever heard of Dunbar’s number? Dunbar is a social psychologist who has dedicated his life to researching the size of social groups. According to his research, humans have a limit of how many intimate relationships they can keep up with – around 150 (note that this is an average and certain factors like age, gender, and extrovertedness versus introvertedness can make this number bigger or smaller). 

Chances are, we all have more than 150 “friends” on our social media platforms. Deleting social media means coming to terms with the fact that you won’t be able to take time to invest in a relationship with every person that you follow on social media. You have to let some people go. 

It might seem cold to scroll through your followers and evaluate which ones you want to stay in contact with and which ones you don’t have a phone number for and are acknowledging that you will probably never see again. But it can also be very freeing. Giving yourself permission to realize that you weren’t going to really keep up with those people with or without social media frees up mental space and time to invest more in relationships that do matter. 

2. Texting and Calls

The best way that I have found to reach out to friends now is through texting. I am in several large friend and family group chats where a culture of sharing everyday things about our lives has been developed. I get a much more developed idea of what is going on with the people I care about through these group chats than I would through social media. 

For friends I don’t see on a frequent basis because they live in a different state/country, I will randomly text them every couple of months for general life updates and pictures, or with a specific question. I’ll also set up periodic calls or send Marco Polos back and forth. 

Occasionally, I will scroll through my contacts and see if there is anyone I want to reach out to that I haven’t heard from recently. That's the simplest way I have found to remind myself to keep up with friends. If I have a thought to reach out to someone, I’ll also add it to my to do list for the day or week. It takes effort, time, and initiative rather than passive scrolling, but the quality of interaction is much higher and more meaningful.  

The hardest part of this for me was getting over double texting. Sometimes friends I text won’t respond, and I’ll end up texting them again months later. I’ve learned to be more secure in myself and my friendships and not treat every action or inaction as a direct reflection of someone else’s thought of or relationship with me. 

3. In-person meetings

It’s much easier to keep up relationships that are geographically close. I reach out to friend groups and friends several times a week to set up lunches and dinners, go for a walk, come over and watch a show, join me on an outing I’m already taking, etc.  

I have also taken the effort and spent resources on traveling to see friends, whether that’s driving an hour and a half to set up a dinner, or buying a $500 plane ticket to visit them. My closest friendships are the ones where each of us have made substantial efforts to make each other a priority in our lives. 

4. Holiday Cards

What about old coworkers that you care to know if they have a baby or move jobs, but you don’t really want to text them more than once a year? Extended family that you don’t see that often? People you want to reconnect with but can’t find an excuse to reach out to them? My personal solution to this is a step backwards in time: send physical holiday cards. 

I finally feel like I am old enough (i.e. out of college) to handle coordinating holiday cards, so I will be sending them out for the first time this year. My family was in the military growing up, and holiday cards were an important way that we kept up with old friends. I loved seeing the short life updates that often accompanied these cards. Plus in this digital era, there is something so special and nostalgic about receiving a physical piece of mail. 

Other lessons

The biggest thing that I have learned in deleting social media is that being good at keeping up with friends is a skill. If you’re bad at it now, you can get better. If other people are bad at keeping up with you, it doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t care about your relationship, maybe they haven’t developed that skill. It takes being vulnerable and reaching out (often multiple times) to maintain friendships, but it's worth it. 

The other thing that has rung true is that when you put more effort into something, you value it more. It does take more effort to keep up with people when you don’t have social media, but I have found that I value my friendships more now because of the work I put into them. 

Takeaway

My friendships have gotten better, not worse, from being off of social media. Looking back, I too often equated simply seeing someone’s photoshoot as the same thing as knowing what was going on in their life. It’s true, sometimes I miss the wedding announcement of an acquaintance. But if I am close enough to someone, I will always eventually find out. I sent 50 individual texts when I got engaged instead of posting on social media, and I received 50 amazing responses that were better than any comments section.

If you think deleting social media is right for you, don’t let keeping in touch with friends be the thing that holds you back.