Over the past few months, I’ve received a number of private messages on Facebook. Most came from people I know and were completely normal. A few came from people I know only through social media, and some of the questions were personal enough that they made me stop and wonder why that person had access to so much of my life in the first place.
Social media has blurred the meaning of “friend” for a long time. Someone you knew in elementary school, worked with briefly 15 years ago, or met once at an event can remain connected to you indefinitely. You may not speak to them, know anything about their life now, or even particularly like them, yet they can still have a front-row seat to yours.
That feels worth examining once in a while.
How Well Do You Know the People Following You?
I think most of us accumulate people online without giving it much thought.
You accept a friend request because you recognize the name. Someone follows you because you have mutual connections. Years pass, and suddenly your audience includes people from almost every chapter of your life.
That doesn’t necessarily mean anything is wrong with them. It also doesn’t mean they need access to everything you share.
I’ve started thinking about it less in terms of whether I “know” someone and more in terms of what I’m comfortable allowing that person to know about me.
Would I tell them when I’m leaving town? Would I show them the inside of my home? Would I send them pictures of the people I love? Would I talk with them about something personal if we were standing face to face?
If the answer is no, it’s reasonable to question why they have unrestricted access to those things online.
Privacy Settings Can Only Do So Much
Social platforms give us tools to limit who sees what, and those settings are worth using. You can restrict audiences, remove followers, hide stories from certain people, and control some of what strangers or acquaintances see.
But privacy settings don’t replace judgment.
Once you post something, you lose some control over where it goes. Someone can take a screenshot, share it with another person, or remember information you didn’t think much about when you posted it.
That doesn’t mean we should become afraid to share anything. It does mean that “private” on social media is not quite the same thing as private in real life.
I think that distinction is easy to forget because these platforms feel familiar. We’ve been using them for years, and the people on our lists often feel familiar too, even when we haven’t actually spoken to them in a decade.
You Don’t Owe Everyone Access
I used to think periodically cleaning out a friends list felt a little harsh. Now I think of it as basic maintenance.
People change. Relationships change. Sometimes a person who made sense in your online circle years ago simply doesn’t anymore.
You don’t need a dramatic reason to remove someone, limit what they can see, or stop accepting requests from people you barely know. You also don’t need to maintain an online connection simply because it has existed for a long time.
For most of us, follower counts and friend counts are not measures of anything particularly meaningful. I would rather know why someone is in my online space than keep them there because removing them feels impolite.
A Different Kind of Stranger Danger
The internet has made it possible to maintain more connections than we could ever realistically maintain in person. That has plenty of benefits, but it also creates a strange category of relationships: people who know a surprising amount about us even though they are barely part of our lives.
I don’t think the answer is to distrust everyone or treat every acquaintance as a potential threat. That feels just as unreasonable.
I do think it makes sense to look at our online circles occasionally and ask a simpler question: Why does this person still have access to me?
Sometimes there will be a perfectly good answer. Sometimes there won’t.
And if there isn’t, I’m increasingly comfortable with changing that.
