Teaching Our Children How to Make and Lose Friends in a Virtual World

The first month of middle school reminds me of those Wacky Races cartoons where characters like Captain Caveman, Dick Dastardley and his dog Muttley compete in a no-rules battle to be the first across the finish line. (I’ll risk dating myself for the uncanny accuracy of the analogy). In 8th grade especially, the social jockeying for position seems to be as much about catching up with those ahead of you as leaving booby traps for those who fall behind.

Watching my children surf these rising and falling tides of friendship over the last few weeks has been heartening. But it also me thinking about whether they are prepared for the swells approaching from deeper waters.

For guidance, I’ll look to Seneca.

“After friendship is formed you must trust, but before that you must judge.” —Seneca, Letter III

Seneca’s rule still holds up, but the process of judging a virtual friend is beyond anything the Stoic’s could have conceived. The internet will always challenge past practices, but within the difference between the new and the old lies our best chance to learn.

For the purposes of this post, I’m skipping over the evil, horrible, predatory possibilities that come with online exposure. Anyway, avoiding the worst case scenario is more straightforward than managing a long-term commitment like friendship. And this is a post about the unavoidable experience of making and losing friends.

In the beginning, making friends is easy. Youthful innocence excuses our ignorance of the rules. It’s all about the mechanics of introduction. Character judgement doesn’t really enter the picture.

When my kids were very young, even the nameless toddler encountered at the playground was deemed a “friend” in hindsight. They lived, blissfully, in a world where the only two categories of humans were friends they knew and friends they had yet to meet. If only we could all live in that world.

By stark contrast, the social world waiting for our children prioritizes shortcuts, offers no quarter to the innocent and becomes more complicated by the day. ChatGPT has emerged as a widely used form of therapy in America. AI Chatbots are friends who offer a sympathetic (if not sycophantic) ear to children using them as gap-fillers or outright replacements for real-world interactions.

To be fair, it’s not all bad. AI can save lives for those who do not have access to real human therapists. Chatbots can help children learn to speak with confidence, handle bullies or navigate a host of other difficulties in human interactions. The real problems arise when children conflate the rules of virtual friendship with those of the real world. Our role as parents should be to provide a balance of experience so our children can find success in both worlds and understand the critical differences between the two.

One of those new social realities is the troubling manner in which children make and lose friends in a virtual world. In “The Anxious Generation” Jonathan Haidt explains:

Real-world relationships take place within communities that have a high bar for entry and exit, so people are strongly motivated to invest in relationships and repair rifts when they happen.

Virtual-world relationships occur in communities that have a low bar for entry and exit so people can block others or just quit when they are not pleased, which often leads to short-lived or disposable relationships.

We don’t have to like it, but we must accept that our children live in both of these worlds. Fortunately, young children still wade in the shallow waters where more of one type of friendship does not result in less of the other. The stakes are as low as they will ever be and they still have time to practice. However, as they swim out into the surf, virtual and real-world relationships do become mutually exclusive. One cannot meet people in the real world if they spend all of their time in the virtual and vice-versa.

Virtual friendships’ low bar to entry is the undertow which sweeps unsuspecting children out to sea (that is probably my last water-related metaphor, but I make no promises). Online, a child may engage in multiple, simultaneous, quick in-and-out relationships with very little effort or resistance. This is true equally for our children and those would-be friends looking to find them on the internet. The cumulative effect is a force which has forever changed the shape of human interactions.

But in some ways this was inevitable. Technology has always pushed us to do things faster with less effort and quicker results. Not surprisingly, as a species we have learned to opt toward the path of least resistance. This can make the process of forming virtual friendships even more appealing to children who find the effort of real-world relationships sluggish or taxing.

Too Thick. Too Quick. Won’t Stick.

A new neighbor moved in across the street many years ago. He was only around for a year, but I learned an important lesson from him. His son was the same age as mine, then about 8 years old. For the first week or two, he and my son were always together. By the next week, the gild was clearly off the lily and within another week or so, it was as if they had never met. My son had moved on and his friend stopped knocking on our door.

There was no flashpoint. Things just quietly fizzled. Not long after, I chatted with the dad one day and he said this had happened before. They moved around a lot, sometimes more than once a year. He told me while trying to help his son figure out how to make friends, he stumbled on the phrase “Too Thick. Too Quick. Won’t Stick.” I had never heard it, but the image resonated immediately in memories of some of the people I have encountered in my own life.

“Nothing important comes into being overnight.” — Epictetus

This law of friendship is immutable. It is one thing to “click” with someone upon first introduction, but a lasting relationship requires a mutual trust learned through a history of shared experiences. That cannot be rushed. But as awkward or upsetting as a failed real-world friendship might be, the consequences are at least relatable to both sides. Furthermore, there is usually some semblance of closure, providing a foundation of experience to better handle the next time.

In direct contradiction, the virtual interface facilitates and even incentivizes the “Too thick. Too quick” mistake. The sheer volume of personal (real or fake) information we exchange fools even adults into believing we “know” this person. It is easy to see how children can misconstrue what is basically a data dump for a new best friend.

But when it all comes apart, the failure hits hard. How could a child’s brain reconcile the confusion of being “ghosted?” When there is no barrier to exit, youthful friendships are almost guaranteed to end prematurely. It also exposes children to relationships that never should have existed in the first place. This frequent, recurring failure can take a toll on self-esteem, something we all need -and not just to make friends.

Don’t Judge an Audio Book by its Narrator

Seneca’s warning to “judge” before trusting requires us to have some criteria upon which to do so, lest we falsely judge a book by its cover. Fortunately, the Stoic virtues of wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance make for pretty great friend material. They are also obvious when you know what you are looking for. The behaviors will seem even more familiar to a child who is already practicing them (maybe because they have been reinforced at home and at school). In that case, finding a friend means seeking out those whose actions align with their own.

Real-world relationships offer a chance to refine our judgement. Within each new interaction we may compare what a potential friend says with what he or she does. This makes it easier to discern character strengths from weakness and real personalities from contrived. In short, concrete experiences are the litmus test of friend and foe.

By contrast, a virtual relationship offers only one window through which to view that new acquaintance. Each side may filter in or out whatever he or she chooses. Without the real-world for comparison, it is almost impossible to ascertain real virtues or to be certain about a person’s authentic character traits, let alone their age, gender or anything else in their online profile.

Making matters worse, online communication is already confusing enough even before we get to the validity of the information exchanged. Text messages lack visual cues, tone and emotional context, while poor grammar, abbreviations, GIFs and emojis undermine clarity of thought. And even though we can see those flashing three dots on the message screen, silence can be just as befuddling. Hardly the ideal conditions from which to make an accurate judgement.

Like other Stoic virtues, justice is unmistakable in the real world. But it is so much easier to fake in the real world that injustice might even occur without actual intent. Unfortunately, things move so quickly online that by the time the truth is revealed, the damage has already been done.

For example, a 13 year old boy gets a haircut and proudly sends a selfie to his best friend. Without thinking, the friend forwards it to a dozen other “friends,” some of whom joined the text group without much consideration. One of them makes a crappy comment and others pile on. The thread finds its way back to the original boy who only meant for his best friend to see the picture.

Obviously, the commenter is the real villain in this picture, but what about the best friend? Surely in hindsight he knows he shouldn’t have sent that picture on, but it happened so quickly with the swipe of a finger. Will he learn the lesson for the next time? How is his friend supposed to judge his actions? With a low bar to exit, that simple mistake can be the unfortunate end of a friendship.

The same scenario cannot happen this way in the real world. It might not be enjoyable to receive an insult to your face, but we’ve all been there. The difficulty passes quickly. The best friend in a real-world scenario cannot make the same mistake as the texting friend. His reach extends only to the people standing next to him. So even if further insults ensue, these best friends still have each other’s trust. Perhaps the shared experience even strengthens their bond.

My boys give me little daily insights into their middle school judgement process. With around 800 children between 6th and 8th grade, they’ve got plenty to talk about. The child on the back of the bus who spouted endless expletives with the noisy crew turns out to be a much more polite and reserved child in different circumstances. The kid who pushes people in the hallway does that to everyone, even his friends. They note the difference in other children whose kindness and empathy remain consistent no matter who is looking.

I can tell they’re following the logic train, searching for what is genuine and what is not. What to follow and what to avoid. Each positive experience is compared to the inevitable conflicts. Initially, it was the latter which garnered their attention, but recently I’ve seen them focus more upon the good moments. With each passing day, I watch them trying to decide whether or how to hold others to their standards. They wouldn’t describe them as virtues per se, but I know that is exactly what they are.

Whether in the virtual or the real-world, the best anyone can do is to keep the bar for friendship as high as we can raise it. Not just anyone gets in. That should be the lesson we teach to our children. Because at a time where it is possible to have millions of “followers,” quality still beats quantity for feeding the soul. I know their judgement will be messy and imperfect. I just hope my children will eventually find the few friends worthy of keeping close and become the type of people who deserve the same