Social media makes it hard to distinguish who you should invite?

View Quoted Comment Thank you!

To be honest, this idea is bizarre to me. I haven’t come across any social media that felt like it was pressuring people to invite everyone they’ve ever talked to or looked at instead of their closest people. Am I missing something? Do you have specific examples?

View Quoted Comment I’m talking about the fact that I’ve been friends with everyone from since Facebook became a thing and all my friend and their family I’m friends with on Facebook but since I’ve grown up since being in high school (like 10 years ago) I’ve been able to keep up with all their lives on Facebook but not necessarily talk to them or keep up over coffee or anything since I’ve moved away from my high school home town. So I feel like I’m still friends with all these people but not close like we used to be. It feels hard to distinguish between whether I should invite them because we were close before but not so much anymore, but I’ve been able to keep up with them via Facebook. And it’s not like I wouldn’t be happy to see them, but is it necessary to extend an invite? I hope that makes sense!

View Quoted Comment Ask yourself a couple different questions: which of these people, if any, would be the first you would contact to celebrate a milestone, vent about something bothering you, or grieve, and they would do so without judgment? Which of these people would you invite to your home for dinner?


For the first question, if you can’t do that with even one, they are not that close to you. They are simply acquaintances.
For the latter, if you would not invite them to your home for dinner and the works, then don’t invite them to a dinner party you are hosting outside your home.
That’s not to say you can’t have genuine friendships via social media due to distance and other factors, but the majority really don’t care about you as a person unfortunately. The key to deciding who to invite: make a list of your closest people you cannot imagine the day without. Only they get invites. Make a second list of people you don’t want in attendance, people you would invite only to please parents, and anyone else who would be there out of guilt/obligation. Those people do not get an invite. If anything is done out of obligation, that’s the first thing to cut because the day should be what you want, not what makes other people happy instead.

View Quoted Comment This is a great way to go about it! Thank you for all these points. This will help me in making my decision! I appreciate it!