Friends in Far-Away Places
Can Internet tools like Skype and Facebook make it easier to maintain long-distance friendships, even when you’re friends are an ocean away?
By Thomas Litchford
“Everyone is moving to San Diego. Or Japan. Anywhere but Norfolk. And people who already live in Norfolk are leaving for Japan!”
This was, more or less, what I said to Danielle last year whenever our friends started talking about their orders. Almost everyone was destined for some far-off homeport.
It all seemed rather unfair at the time, but I’m powerless against the will of the Navy Personnel Command and the desirability of the San Diego climate (apparently it’s 70 degrees and sunny there every day. Look it up — I’m just barely joking).
And if you’re the kind of person who thinks it would be cool to live in Japan, who am I to say otherwise? I think it would be cool to live in Japan, too.
But I still find myself in a bind. As someone who’s not quick to make friends, I like to hang on to the ones I have. The problem is, keeping in touch is hard. Long-distance phone calls are expensive, e-mail has killed letter-writing, and e-mail itself is all too easy to take for granted and put off till tomorrow.
Can Skype, Facebook, and Twitter succeed in helping me keep in touch with friends in exotic locales where phone calls and e-mail have failed?
At least in the short term, the answer appears to be “Yes.” The relative public-ness of Facebook and Twitter — that is, the fact that it’s one big conversation amongst all your friends — takes away a lot of the pressure e-mail places upon us. You can participate or not, depending on how social you’re feeling that day. Facebook is like a j3rktail party that never stops, whereas e-mail can sometimes feel like a high school reunion where you’re constantly having to make small talk with people you haven’t seen in ten years.
Skype, a service that allows you to talk to make phone calls over the Internet, with or without video, for free, is even more of a miracle worker when it comes to long-distance friendships. As long as you and your friends have fast Internet connections, Skype allows you to have a voice or video conversation from anywhere in the world.
The other night, I was chatting with my friend Meg via the instant messaging feature on Facebook. I was at home in Virginia, where it was 10 o’clock at night. Meg was in Japan, where it was 11 o’clock...tomorrow morning? (One thing you discover when you have friends on the other side of the world is that the time changes get a little disorienting.) Meg wanted to show me her new, depressingly empty house, so I dialed her up on Skype, warning her that I was in my pajamas. In seconds, I was looking at the image of Meg in her new living room in Yokosuka, Japan, and we were having a conversation as naturally as can be, without a single hiccup in the connection, even though the data had to travel under an ocean and across a continent.
It’s an open question what effect all this technology has on making new, face-to-face friendships. My hunch is that we all spend so much time tweeting on Twitter and tweaking our Facebook profiles that we have less social energy at our disposal for forming new relationships. But at the same time, I’m not sure I care. I’ve invested a lot in the few strong friendships I’ve formed over the years. It would be a shame to let the 7,000 miles or so between Virginia and Japan pull them apart.