{"id":719,"date":"2018-07-12T23:24:37","date_gmt":"2018-07-13T03:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/atashajordan.com\/?p=719"},"modified":"2020-02-01T19:14:15","modified_gmt":"2020-02-02T00:14:15","slug":"keeping-in-touch-with-friends-in-the-digital-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atashajordan.com\/blog\/keeping-in-touch-with-friends-in-the-digital-era\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping in Touch with Friends in the Digital Era"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With my 5-year reunion<\/a> almost 2 months behind me, I\u2019m reminded of how happy I was to see some of my closest friends. Some friends, I text, Snapchat, Instagram message, or call regularly, while others I hadn\u2019t seen or interacted with since college. Despite the fact that I had been relatively close with some of these classmates in college, the physical separation kept us out of touch. Keeping in touch with friends can be .tough And for some of us, keeping in touch with family isn\u2019t easier.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s interesting to me is how easy it is to passively know what\u2019s going on in the lives of our friends and families. Social media allows us to keep tabs on folks\u2019 whereabouts. On Instagram,<\/a> we post about the cool things we\u2019ve done and places we\u2019ve visited. On LinkedIn<\/a>, we share job promotions and startup ventures. On Twitter,<\/a> we express our inner thoughts to all who will listen. On Facebook<\/a>, we do a mix of all the above. With all of these social media platforms, we can know what<\/em> our friends and family are doing without truly knowing how<\/em> they are doing.<\/p>\n

Because we often know what\u2019s going on in our friends\u2019 and families\u2019 lives, there\u2019s less of a pull toward checking in to see how folks are doing. In the midst of our highly digitized world, keeping in touch with friends and family is still incredibility difficult for many.<\/p>\n

Out of Sight, Out of Mind<\/strong><\/h6>\n

A friend of mine mentioned that he inadvertently takes on an \u201cout of sight, out of mind\u201d approach when it comes to keeping in touch with friends. The college friends I hadn\u2019t spoken to in years were the folks who I simply hadn\u2019t interacted with in my day-to-day life. Our paths either completely diverged, or their limited use of social media made them less top of mind than the friends who post more regularly. So over time, interactions never occurred. On the other hand, the friends I\u2019ve stayed in touch with for as long as ~15 years are people with whom I share daily experiences. The friends that I keep in touch with most are friends who are either 1) in the same city as I am, 2) experiencing parallel lives (i.e. in medical school or business school), or 3) super active on social media. Friends who do not fit into these categories are \u201cout of sight\u201d and soon after become \u201cout of mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ability to easily fall out of touch with friends makes me think of 2 questions:<\/p>\n

\n1) Is it all that bad to infrequently communicate with the people we care most about?
\n2) How do we improve our ability to communicate regularly with the people we care about?<\/p>\n

Regarding the first question, I've come to terms with the fact that some of my BEST friends are people I talk to at most 1-2x a year. Because we have so much in common and care so deeply for each other, the time between our communication does not reduce the strength of the relationship. For question #2, I've included some quick tips below to help with keeping in touch with friends!<\/p>\n

Quick Tips for Keeping in Touch with Friends<\/strong><\/h6>\n
1) Set aside time<\/em><\/h6>\n

I know some folks who set aside certain days of the week or times of the day to Facetime or call friends and family. If you build communication with friends into your schedule, you\u2019re more likely to do it regularly!<\/p>\n

2) Use downtime wisely<\/em><\/h6>\n

Life has a way of getting busy. Days and weeks go by in the blink of an eye. Next thing you know it\u2019s been a few months since you checked in on a good friend. This has definitely happened to me. It wasn\u2019t until recently that I truly began to maximize my downtime to catch up with friends and family. My most regular downtime takes place when I\u2019m walking or driving to a destination. So I use that time to get quick phone calls in with my friends and family.<\/p>\n

3) Push yourself<\/em><\/h6>\n

Common excuses that I hear about not keeping in touch with friends are \u201cI don\u2019t like to talk on the phone\u201d or \u201cI hate texting!\u201d<\/p>\n

I heard a great quote once: \u201cExcuses will always be there for you. Opportunity won\u2019t.\u201d Life is short, and you never know when you or someone you love will no longer be here. Push yourself past the excuses that keep you from contacting friends. Keep in touch while it\u2019s still an option.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/h6>\n

In the end, when you think about keeping in touch with friends, it\u2019s important to figure out what matters to you in terms of connecting with people. Do you want to be involved in their lives for birthday trips, weddings, and anniversaries? Do you want keep in touch with friends to maintain potential professional connections? Do you want to have people who are there to support you when life isn\u2019t all roses?<\/p>\n

Once you know what matters to you, make a plan so that you can achieve that goal and make sure that your friends know of your plan to keep in touch with them more regularly. Yes, you can hold yourself accountable, but communication is a two-way street. Stating your intentions for more frequent communication can spark your friends to reach out to you too. I\u2019ve mentioned external accountability in my posts<\/a> a lot. It\u2019s because I REALLY believe in having others to help support you and keep you on track toward the goals you set for yourself.<\/p>\n

In the meanwhile, feel free to reach out to me if you\u2019re a friend reading this post \ud83d\ude0a<\/p>\n

Peace and blessings,<\/p>\n

Atasha Jordan, MD (to be)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

<\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With my 5-year reunion almost 2 months behind me, I\u2019m reminded of how happy I was to see some of my closest friends. Some friends, I text, Snapchat, Instagram message, or call regularly, while others I hadn\u2019t seen or interacted with since college. Despite the fact that I had been relatively close with some of these classmates in college, the physical separation kept us out of touch. Keeping in touch with friends can be .tough And for some of us, keeping in touch with family isn\u2019t easier. What\u2019s interesting to me is how easy it is to passively know what\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"It's easy to accumulate Facebook friends and Twitter followers, but it's incredibly difficult to stay in touch with everyone. I wrote about how I work toward staying in touch with the people I love. #friendship #digitalworld #blogpost #newpost #blogger","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[317,284,282],"tags":[159,157,156,158,160],"class_list":["post-719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle-wellness","category-sempwell","category-wellness","tag-communication","tag-family","tag-friends","tag-keeping-in-touch","tag-relationships"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/atashajordan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/dreamstime_xxl_118938846.jpg?fit=6016%2C4016&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9VPX9-bB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atashajordan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atashajordan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atashajordan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atashajordan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atashajordan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/atashajordan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2919,"href":"https:\/\/atashajordan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719\/revisions\/2919"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atashajordan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atashajordan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atashajordan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atashajordan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}