Odd Girl Out (19 page)

The ubiquity of texting has inflected the dynamics of real-time friendship. Many girls think it is rude when a text is not instantly answered. It is now considered normal (if not outrageously rude) to text other people while you are spending time with a friend. The arrangement satisfies the texter's hunger to connect and offers her the impression of being in two—or seven—places at once. But the quality of such companionship is poor. As Amy, thirteen, told me, "My friends are always texting or calling their boyfriends or other friends whenever they're at my house. I feel like I'm losing my friend and her attention. It makes me feel so left out." Still, Amy remained silent. She did not feel entitled to speak up.

Each moment of insecurity, jealousy, anxiety, or anger online can ignite into something much bigger. All it takes is a quick, sarcastic text from Judith to start drama with her two friends at the mall. If Meghan decides to post a snarky message about her lying friend, it's a shot fired across the bow. Just a few years ago, these unique challenges and questions did not exist. But when a girl is sitting in front of a computer or phone, without the reassuring eye contact or comfort a present friend can provide, her feelings of paranoia, fear, anxiety, and insecurity may skyrocket.

Yet to ascribe the challenges girls face in BFF 2.0 to the medium alone would be a mistake. Social media may magnify emotions and facilitate cruelty, but it does not "make" girls act a particular way. For it is not just technology that is altering girls' friendships; girls influence the ways technology is used. They import and impose their distinctly girl values and habits online.

In ingenious ways, girls manipulate technology to reproduce the girl dynamics of real life. In person, one girl might make another one jealous by walking down the hall arm-in-arm with a new friend or love interest. Online, girls re-create this effect by posting vengeful, intimate photos. When Facebook ended the practice of allowing users to rank their "top" or best friends, girls compensated by using another Facebook mechanism to designate their closest friends as family members and even spouses. Just as boys whose parents ban war toys are known to cut a piece of toast into the shape of a gun, girls have made Facebook bow to their need for social hierarchy.

The unique communication rituals and habits of girls have also found homes online. In the hallway, an irritated girl mutters a clipped "hey" to signal something is wrong. On her phone, Lindsey texts her sullen "hi" with only the lowercase letter "h." "That would mean I'm angry," she explains. When all is well, "I'm [typing] 'hi what's up?'" And consider Erin, who takes the silent treatment into the twenty-first century by refusing to respond to a text when she is upset with someone. "When you have the option of not sending a message back, you have a sense of power. That is your way of saying, 'I'm in control of this relationship.'"

If the phrase "just kidding" wasn't bad enough in real life, it becomes even more cutting and confusing in BFF 2.0. Consider these messages: "HEY GET A NEW PROFILE PIC WOMAN LOL

LUV YA," "shut up Amber ©," "rosa, you're such a b——ch. Just kidding, you're not a b——ch. You're great." Are these senders really kidding? If you were a girl who received them, what would you think? Where real-time jokes can be sussed out for tone or gesture, these comments stand alone on a screen. They may be read by an insecure girl, a girl who bears a grudge against the joker, a confident girl, a distracted girl. Everyone has a different trigger point, and the opportunity for misinterpretation, and retaliation, is rampant.

Leah Martin, twelve, attends a public middle school in a middle-class suburb of a major East Coast city. During our telephone interview, she speaks so fast I can hardly follow her. My in box pings and pings; seated in front of her computer, she forwards links, chat conversations, and e-mails she thinks I'll want for my research, all without breaking stride in any sentence. She spins dizzyingly from one story to the next, and I scramble to keep up as she guides me through her social universe.

Most striking about Leah's life is a social hierarchy mediated by technology. Leah has a friend, Carrie, who she has met and now interacts with entirely via text message. Despite their frequent contact, when they pass each other in the hallways at school, they do not say hello.

They don't speak? At all? "It would have been awkward if I said hi to her," she explained, while I listened, agog. Leah had other friends who she only texted but still greeted, though "in person if we hung out it would be so awkward it's beyond belief. In person it's so awkward, I don't even want to talk to them." Then there was Andrew, a friend who told her he loved her in text messages but could not say it in person.

Leah volunteered to explain what she called her "food chain" of friendships:

My friends at the bottom of the food chain, like, I text them all the time but I don't socialize with them in person. Another level of friends is, you can be friends with somebody on Facebook but never have met them. I have over eight hundred friends on Facebook. I haven't met some of them. I don't know them. I don't talk to them. Then, my friends that I text and who are acquaintances. We say, like, "hi." Then I have good friends-ish: we text all the time and we hang out in person. And then we have, like, our best friends. You don't text them. You call them all the time. You talk in person and you can be completely honest with them. You text them but you talk on the phone and hang out every weekend. They are, like, your life.

If the girl mandate is to be constantly connected and have lots of friends, social media allows Leah to "overachieve." She can show off her success to her peers and reassure herself that she is far from alone.

Leah can also experiment with new, if slightly cringeworthy versions of relationship. On the one hand, her text-only friendships seem to substitute technology for authentic connection. On the other hand, who are we to judge? As long as she is safe and satisfied, why shouldn't Leah enjoy the thrilling reach of social media? Most tellingly, despite these new permutations of relationship, some things don't change: best friends are best when they are live and in person. The 2010 study by the Girl Scouts confirmed that 92 percent of girls would give up all of their social media friends if it meant keeping their best friend.
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Your closest friends, as Leah says, "are, like, your life."

The fluidity between girls' online and virtual worlds allows them to recruit the tools of social media to execute offline agendas. Consider this Instant Messenger conversation
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between Trisha and Leah. Trisha begins by instant messaging Leah, ostensibly to tell Leah that she has a new invitation to trick-or-treat on Halloween. It quickly becomes clear that Trisha has another agenda: she is in conflict with Julie, their mutual friend.

Trisha: leah i need to talk to you my phone is dead and i feel like charging it so please reply

Leah: hahaha okay whats up

Trisha: nvm [not very much] nora invited us to go trick or treating

Leah: do you want to go? did she only invite you or me too?

Trisha: both of us or you can go with julie idc [I don't care]

Leah: i wasnt invited to julies ... but my other friends were suppose to come with me though if you want you can go with nora i wont be affended at all, but whats happening with julie? are you mad at her?

Trisha: nothing is happening with julie if she is going to like ignore me and s——t then i really don't care

Leah: yeah go trisha!!!!!! i love you and you and julie have been best friends forever everyting will work out

Trisha: truth is if things don't work out then its fine Leah: youll still be best friends with me :D

Trisha: does julie say stuff about me

Leah: she just said you guys got into a fight today at lunch and now you wont talk to her

 

Leah understands that it is her obligation as a friend to invite Trisha to vent and affirm that she is on Trisha's side. With Leah's loyalty confirmed, Trisha ups the ante, asking Leah to betray Julie by disclosing anything Julie has said about Trisha. When Leah agrees, Trisha reveals more:

Trisha: we didn't even get into a fight and she isn't talking to me and she is just like in my homeroom with deanna jen and elizabeth and they went to her show this weekend and they were like laughing and whispering and its just like oh hi julie whatsup like whos suppose to be your best friend them or me and i feel like she is just saying she is my best friend and not really meaning it and like she doesn't tell me anything so like i don't know if she really is

Leah: it doesn't really seem like you guys are that good of friends which upsets me cause i love you both but i dont really know if she actually likes us.

Notice how Leah has now begun to backpedal. She tries to play both sides, affirming her friendship with Trisha but still saying she likes Julie, too.

Watch how Trisha responds: detecting that she needs to work harder to get Leah fully on her side, she takes aim at Leah's relationship with Julie by implying Julie has also betrayed Leah. Then Trisha goes further, suggesting that Leah could never really know if Julie was a trustworthy friend because she is fake and lies:

Trisha: shes not my really good friend and i know she is not a true friend like she talks s——t about her friends and if you get to close to her she will tell people stuff about you and denies stuff when you confront her about it like she will say something about you and if like i tell you and you ask her about it she'll just deny it and usually people will just believe her because she isn't like me, like i will say whatever i want and i'll be mean to people and won't care and don't hang out with people i dont like but julie hangs out with them and just talks about them and she is nicer and trys to act innocent

Leah: thats even worse what she does. thats os rude and mean. i dont even wanna know what kind of s——t she says about me because she probally says the same about you

Trisha: like i know she says stuff about me and she has said something about you but like i'm not on best terms with her right now so i don't want you to think i am just saying that, like i don't want to be caught in the middle of anything because i go to school with her and will have to deal with her for at least two years so i might as well just if not be friends with put up with

Trisha has successfully triangulated, making Leah as much a target of Julie as herself. Leah has moved from the role of supportive girlfriend to the position of angry, jilted friend. She immediately spills the beans on just how much Julie talks about Trisha behind her back.

Leah: thats so rude she trashing on both of us then denys everything this isnt okay trisha i always stick up when shes says s——t about you and like now she goes and say stuff about me? wow shes so insecure.

Trisha: i just don't even know about her anymore and i just want to tell you before she trys to turn this on me

Leah: i know i dont even care what she says. what do you reply when she says s——t? i wont get mad if you dont defend me not a lot of people do defend people

Trisha: i always defend you because your my best friend and like its not cool if i just let people talk about you

Leah: aww so do i i dont let her say s——t

Trisha:
i gotta go i'll charge my phone and text yu later

In the conversation's finale, Leah not only affirms her loyalty to Trisha, but she timidly asks Trisha if she is willing to defend her. Trisha responds with the ultimate declaration of friend love—"your my best friend." Leah reciprocates. Within just a few lines of text, Leah goes from being the secure friend sought out for support to the supplicant seeking that same support, now fearful of a disloyal friend. Trisha has managed to recruit Leah to be a target with her and, in the process, affirmed their closeness as best friends.