Types of Friends

Nicky Daniels

In today’s world, most people are more focused on computer mediated communication. We are more focused on who just posted the latest Instagram photo, and who tweeted what than making friends face to face.  Making friendships while being so distracted on social media can be hard and sometimes superficial.  Looking at the social penetration theory, one can see that there are different levels at which we make friends.  At first, our immediate opinion of someone is based on what their appearance is and what gender they are.  If we like what this person looks like then we sometimes take the next step into getting to know their personality.  What they belief in, what their prejudices are and what their faith is.  Finally, if we like those qualities of said person, we will look into the core values of this person.  Their values, emotions and self concepts.  Most of the time I do not think that pealing back all three layers of the social penetration theory is necessary in order to have a friendship.  Granted, if all three are pealed back the more likely the friendship will last, and the stronger it will be. 

There are also many different types of friendships.  Many of us have a best friend.  This is the person or people that we see the most and spend the most time with.  These are also the people who know the most about us and vise versa. These are called our tier one friendships.  These types of friends are the ones who are like our family.  We call them when we have important or sad news and they are usually the people we want to tell everything too.  Although having best friends is a great thing, there are people out there who try to please everyone and make everyone their best friend.  These are the people who eventually make their “friends” mad because of them trying to make everyone happy.  Below our tier one friend are our tier two friends.  These are the people who are our pretty good friends but not as good as our best friends.  These are the kind of people who we would go to lunch or dinner with two or three times a week and would probably invite to our wedding but would not assign them any specific task besides sitting in the crowd.  Below our tier two friends are our tier three friends.  These people are not really our friends. We might go out together once, but there is a very unlikely chance of it happening again soon.  With these people, they are more like our friend’s friends.  There is also a possibility that we will want to hook up with one of these people.  And even further outside of the friend group is the acquaintance.  These are the people you would maybe stop on the street to say hello but would not hang out with one on one.  An example of this kind of person could even be emailing a professor about school work. 

I am the kind of person that calls people my best friends but in reality I only have a select few people who are my actual best friends.  When I do talk to my best friends, its usually through computer mediated communication because we are all away at different colleges but when I do get to see them over breaks we all much rather prefer face to face and spending as much time together as we can. 

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/12/10-types-odd-friendships-youre-probably-part.html