People who post on social media almost every day and multiple times a day....

[SnazzyB]

I will have to disagree with that. There are plenty of people I know,but do t consider them as friends. Some people I work with for example. They're certainly not my enemies...and I don't dislike them, but I don't think of them as friends.

[Sonic_Spork]

Originally Posted by otterhere

I'm sure the definition of "friend" has changed over the decades. It used to be someone you knew very well, maybe all your life, whom you could count on for anything. Now it's just...someone you know, however superficially or distantly.

Facebook using the term "friends" hasn't helped any.

I think that the definition of that word has been highly subjective going back as far as you want to try and go back.

Read some Shakespeare. You will find it used in various ways. I know some Quakers who use it to refer to anyone in their shared religious community. There have always been people who behave in different ways when it comes to socializing.

There isn't some version of "the good ol' days" where everyone grew up in small town USA and the only time they'd call somebody a friend was when they have known each other all their lives. During whatever period in history you wish to point to, there were masses of people living in cities, or engaged in labor organizations, political activities, public speakers, gangsters, I mean...the list goes on, people from all of a thousand walks of life who might use that word in a way other than what you describe.

And we are only looking at the English word here... I wonder if in other languages they have more specific words that specify these more particular meanings? I know that in French they have two versions of "you", tu and vous, which are respectively less formal and more formal. And if I recall (my French is horribly rusty since I haven't used it since high school)...vous doubles for the plural "you." But one's choice between those two words in referring to a singular person would imply something about whether they are "friends" or not, to some degree.

[Jill_Schramm]

I think part of the issue is that some people use their Facebook account to keep in more or less constant contact with their close friends and family. But these people also happen to have 400+ Facebook friends and have not figured out how to set up friendship circles (to be fair I think only 5% of Facebook users do this), so all 400+ “friends” are getting all these intimate details all the time, even though the poster is not really thinking about this huge audience when they are posting today’s Wordle score, or how long they have been sitting in the doctor’s waiting room, or this great deal on raspberries they just saw at Publix, or what happened at church this morning or what their cat just did (although I have to say cat photos are almost always welcome.

[Jill_Schramm]

Originally Posted by otterhere

I'm sure the definition of "friend" has changed over the decades. It used to be someone you knew very well, maybe all your life, whom you could count on for anything. Now it's just...someone you know, however superficially or distantly.

Facebook using the term "friends" hasn't helped any.

I have noticed this too.

Personally I don’t count someone as a friend until we have had at least one social event where we specifically planned to be there together, instead of just happening to be there together and having a good time. So, I’d say that I have about 20 (max) friends in real life, plus lots of close, friendly acquaintances.

[Rocko20]

Socialization, validation, boredom, confirmation, or enjoyment, etc.

We have people on this very site, retired, who post probably 50+ times a day.