Most people have someone that they chat with on the way from the bus to class—someone to say hi to in West Union and ask questions to about class assignments. But that’s about it. You are friends with this person—maybe you’ve exchanged anecdotes and complained about life together—but you would never hang out outside of class.
I call these convenience friends. They exist all around Duke.
Rush is a great breeding ground for convenience friendships. Who knows if they’ll end up in the same SLG or sorority or frat as you? But it’s great to have someone to talk to and go to events with, so you have a conversational crutch when your small talk abilities wane. You are only friends when it is convenient to you—to both of you, for that matter—but fail to move beyond the stage of niceties and commonalities that reach beyond your immediate setting.
Convenience friends can be a starting point for a true friendship. Perhaps you burst through the superficiality of your relationship and become truly good friends. Perhaps you both get bids to the same organization and are given the proper setting and time to connect. Meeting people in classes should be effective because you share academic passions (or a desire to make lots of money upon graduating). But often times these people fall away when the semester or rush ends and you rarely see them again.
The function of convenience friends is that they prevent us from being alone. Imagine walking into class and having no one to protest about the difficulty of your outrageous assignments and how little sleep you got and how your days away from dropping out. This would be a travesty. Because no matter how disconnected you feel from the person beside you, they do a fine job filling the void that is your social appetite. If you’re alone it means you’re not good at making friends, not worthy of conversation and complaints. You want to push out your worries in front of you and digest your concerns together. Being alone means you have to be introspective, as opposed to avoiding problems with socializing. Convenience friends are like a bandaid for the wounds that solitude opens up.
Yet, it is highly unpleasant to always feel like a convenience friend. Unequal dynamics in friendships often exist, where one individual places more emphasis on the relationship than the other. But to chronically feel as though one’s friends spend time with them only because you share a similar situation hurts. The kind of 1,000+ Instagram followers, quality-over-quantity social atmosphere that currently exists at Duke encourages the formation of these convenience friendships. Instead of creating deep connections, people focus on meeting as many people as possible.
Anthropologist Robert Dunbar created a concept called “Dunbar’s number.” This is a measure of the maximum amount of meaningful relationships a person can have at one time. Even with the increase in social media, this number is just 150 people. To some that may seem high, to others low, but regardless most humans cannot be really close to hoards of people. What even is a meaningful relationship? Dunbar further expanded his theory to include layers of intimacy. The first layer consists of five people, then 15, 50, and 150 people. Introverts and extroverts had different numbers of friends, but the same layers of intimacy. Most people crave close relationships more than the casual, small-talk oriented ones. Intimate relationships are not created when there is a barrier like the low level of connection and effort a person puts into convenience friendships.
Convenience friends are not inherently bad; nor should you stop trying to meet people in classes and other activities. However, it is important to be cognizant of whether you truly connect with the people you spend time with or are just unwilling to be alone or put more effort into budding relationships. Going through an entire day, talking to many people, and not feeling a connection to any of them feels kind of hollow. Similarly, only being a convenience friend is unfulfilling as well.
Serial socializing has become the norm for most people. Having a large amount of friends indicates high social worth. Engaging in behavior like this is not questioned; it is praised. But people are not generally fulfilled by having a huge quantity of friends, rather by some close friendships. Convenience friends naturally arise from the structure of new classes every semester. It is important to evaluate whether you are friends with people based off an unwillingness to be alone or actual connection. It is also important to consider whether you make your convenience friends feel like they are placeholders, rather than actual friends.
Duke’s current social climate prioritizes having a large amount of friends, though it is impossible to be close to all of them. The next time you cycle through West Union, throwing out “Hey! What’s up?” and a dozens waves to familiar faces, assess whether these less-invested interactions are truly satisfying, or they’re merely what’s convenient.
Camille Wilder is a Trinity first-year. Her column runs on alternate Wednesdays.
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Camille Wilder is a Trinity first-year. Her column runs on alternate Thursdays.