The "Unfriend" Button, Changing Relationships One Click at a Time

   By SheSpeaksTeam  Oct 11, 2012
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Ending a friendship with someone you no longer feel chummy with used to mean having an awkward, embarrassing, or even downright heated conversation. Nowadays when a person no longer feels friendly toward another they can simply click a button and “unfriend” them on Facebook.

The unfriend option is appealing to many Facebook users because of how easy and non-confrontational it feels. The friend in question may not even realize it’s been done since they don’t receive any kind of alert or notification when they’ve been unfriended.

Mashable recently released Sara Mauer’s “how-to” on unfriending on Facebook. Though unfriending a distant acquaintance may not be a big deal if and when they find out, unfriending someone you know well or share mutual friends with can be a bit dicey. Mauer recommends that you first consider hiding your posts or their posts from your newsfeed rather than taking the drastic step of unfriending which may later result in hurt feelings.

Joyce Walder from the New York Times recently wrote an article about how different ending a friendship is now that we have social media at our fingertips. Today people are often left wondering why as opposed to a non-Facebook time when people knew exactly why someone no longer wanted to be friends. Walder writes, “I realized the other day that I had been quietly unfriended on Facebook and I could not help but think how much better things were 50 years ago, when a relationship went south and you knew why.”

What do you think of “unfriending” on Facebook?

How do you handle the situation when you no longer want to be friends on Facebook?
 

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hb3908 by hb3908 | WAKE FOREST, NC
Oct 11, 2012

I quit Facebook three months ago because of issues like this - pettiness, hurt feelings, etc. I decided it was better to actually be present in my friends lives, as in really present. Has it hurt friendships to leave Facebook? Nope. The friends that I hold near and dear to my heart text me and email me each day - I'll never do Facebook again!

MadHatter by MadHatter | Whitestone , NY
Oct 11, 2012

I think the unfriend button is taken too seriously by others. I have read in news papers where people actually KILL the other party because they were defriended. I can care less about that option because I only put people I keep in touch with and stay in touch with on my facebook. I don't accept friends with people who I meet in one day.