Social Media Friending and Following includes a range of actions and behaviors on social media platforms. The term ‘Friending’ is used to describe the process of adding another user to your friends list, which enables two-way communication and certain privileges. Conversely, ‘Following’, a term widely used on platforms such as Instagram[1] and Twitter, involves subscribing to another user’s updates without needing to be their friend. The ability to unfollow or block someone facilitates unilateral connections or disconnections. The ethical considerations, public attitudes, and professional limits related to these actions are frequently debated and can significantly differ based on profession, location, and personal network. Additionally, academic studies and legal instances offer more understanding of the complexities and consequences of friending and following on social media.
Friending is the act of adding someone to a list of "friends" on a social networking service. The notion does not necessarily involve the concept of friendship. It is also distinct from the idea of a "fan"—as employed on the WWW sites of businesses, bands, artists, and others—since it is more than a one-way relationship. A "fan" only receives things. A "friend" can communicate back to the person friending. The act of "friending" someone usually grants that person special privileges (on the service) with respect to oneself. On Facebook, for example, one's "friends" have the privilege of viewing and posting to one's "timeline".
Following is a similar concept on other social network services, such as Twitter and Instagram, where a person (follower) chooses to add content from a person or page to their newsfeed. Unlike friending, following is not necessarily mutual, and a person can unfollow (stop following) or block another user at any time without affecting that user's following status.
The first scholarly definition and examination of friending and defriending (the act of removing someone from one's friend list, also called unfriending) was David Fono and Kate Raynes-Goldie's "Hyperfriendship and beyond: Friends and Social Norms on LiveJournal" from 2005, which identified the use of the term as both a noun and a verb by users of early social network site and blogging platform LiveJournal, which was originally launched in 1999.
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