Calendar An icon of a desk calendar. Cancel An icon of a circle with a diagonal line across. Caret An icon of a block arrow pointing to the right. Email An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of the Facebook "f" mark. Google An icon of the Google "G" mark. Linked In An icon of the Linked In "in" mark. Logout An icon representing logout. Profile An icon that resembles human head and shoulders. Telephone An icon of a traditional telephone receiver. Tick An icon of a tick mark. Is Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes. Is Not Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes with a diagonal line through it. Pause Icon A two-lined pause icon for stopping interactions. Quote Mark A opening quote mark. Quote Mark A closing quote mark. Arrow An icon of an arrow. Folder An icon of a paper folder. Breaking An icon of an exclamation mark on a circular background. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Caret An icon of a caret arrow. Clock An icon of a clock face. Close An icon of the an X shape. Close Icon An icon used to represent where to interact to collapse or dismiss a component Comment An icon of a speech bubble. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Ellipsis An icon of 3 horizontal dots. Envelope An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Home An icon of a house. Instagram An icon of the Instagram logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. Magnifying Glass An icon of a magnifying glass. Search Icon A magnifying glass icon that is used to represent the function of searching. Menu An icon of 3 horizontal lines. Hamburger Menu Icon An icon used to represent a collapsed menu. Next An icon of an arrow pointing to the right. Notice An explanation mark centred inside a circle. Previous An icon of an arrow pointing to the left. Rating An icon of a star. Tag An icon of a tag. Twitter An icon of the Twitter logo. Video Camera An icon of a video camera shape. Speech Bubble Icon A icon displaying a speech bubble WhatsApp An icon of the WhatsApp logo. Information An icon of an information logo. Plus A mathematical 'plus' symbol. Duration An icon indicating Time. Success Tick An icon of a green tick. Success Tick Timeout An icon of a greyed out success tick. Loading Spinner An icon of a loading spinner. Facebook Messenger An icon of the facebook messenger app logo. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Facebook Messenger An icon of the Twitter app logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. WhatsApp Messenger An icon of the Whatsapp messenger app logo. Email An icon of an mail envelope. Copy link A decentered black square over a white square.

Erica Munro: Social media has made us dangerously blind to other points of view

Friends Reunited gave us our old social networks back, but now, with the vastness of the internet, we must find new ones.

Friends Reunited was one of the earliest forms of social media (Image: Steve Meddle/Shutterstock)
Friends Reunited was one of the earliest forms of social media (Image: Steve Meddle/Shutterstock)

Do you remember your earliest encounters with the internet? Or, at least, your first “wow!” moment?

I remember mine. I’d popped in to say hello to my brother at his office and to scrounge a mug of tea, something I’m still good at.

His computer sat in the background and we were talking about a house which was up for sale. My first thought was to ring up the estate agent and ask for a set of sale particulars to be sent out. But, instead, my brother turned to his computer, “logged on to the internet” (remember that dial-up hiss and the ke-boing ke-boing ke-boing as it booted up?), “accessed the estate agent’s website” – ooh, get you! – and “pulled up” the sales images of the property in question.

Enthralled, I clearly recall nodding towards his printer and asking: “C… can you actually print these details out?” He could and he did. In colour, no less. It felt like a magic trick.

Immediately, I went out and bought a computer. It cost £1,000 and probably contained less technology than the smoke alarms currently installed in my house. I loved it, and noodled around the world wide web for hours, randomly accessing whatever was available, until I stumbled upon the country’s earliest version of what has come to be known as social media; the Box Brownie camera, if you like, the Model T Ford, the twin tub washing machine. Yes, it was Friends Reunited.

All of a sudden, we could make contact, or at least read all about, people we’d been at school or college with, find out what had become of them, even see what they looked like, both then and now. Yikes, did we really have hair like that? And what was with the shoulder pads?

As the site gathered pace, we began to hear about people who went on it with more nefarious intent. After all, Friends Reunited offered a sneak through an anonymous portal into a lost world of unrequited love, high school crushes, first boyfriends, girlfriends, teachers… A smorgasbord of unfinished business or missed opportunities.

Years before Facebook and even MySpace, there was Friends Reunited (Image: Evan Lorne/Shutterstock)

Ooh, the cheeky beggars! With hindsight, it’s unsurprising. Humans, eh? But most of us simply enjoyed the innocent delight of catching up with old friends outside of the limited former options of writing a letter or showing up on someone’s doorstep.

Through Friends Reunited, people and relationships which were important to us during highly formative years could be reborn. The internet itself seemed human.

Friends Reunited aimed to bring people together, there’s a big clue in its name after all, but I wish that the resulting social media revolution had evolved differently.

Social media gives us a dopamine hit of belonging

I was astonished to learn today that Friends Reunited started up not somewhere in the 1980s, as I had guessed before checking, but in the year 2000. Wasn’t that, like, the day before yesterday? I have tights that are older than that.

Anyway, if only we’d grabbed onto on its kinder possibilities as it snowballed. We could have made friends from all over the globe, shared information and resources, done good work and generally become better people. Because it’s all there for free, right? Well, no. Everything has a price.

Friends Reunited gave us our old social networks back, but now, with the vastness of the internet, we must find new ones

The answer to any question you might care to ask is literally at our fingertips online. It may be incorrect, but it’s there. And, if we don’t like it, we can keep scrolling ’til we find one that suits, better because I guarantee it’ll be there, too.

And, as with facts, so with friends. Friends Reunited gave us our old social networks back, but now, with the vastness of the internet, we must find new ones. This ought to be amazing but is actually pretty scary.

Carefully, we pick and choose new friends, ones we agree with or admire, be they politicians, comedians, sportspeople, pop stars, historians, commentators, influencers, bloggers – anyone whose online presence gives us the dopamine hit of belonging that we used to get from our mates. Which is great until it isn’t.

We peacemakers don’t hear other points of view

Few of us seek out people whose views we don’t agree with, in real life or online, for fear of unpleasantness. I don’t want to spend my downtime squabbling, but others do, and I avoid them… And on we go.

The trouble with this is that we peacemakers don’t hear other points of view, and the internet, now intelligent, gathers our data and funnels more and more targeted information our way, giving us more of what we like and less of what we don’t, gently kettling us further back into the safety of our curated community, gently squeezing out those who don’t belong, gently leaving us comfortable and united, among friends.

Many of us now spend a lot of our time attached to our phones and social media in particular (Image: M_Agency/Shutterstock)

It’s such a waste of an amazing social resource. Who’s to blame? Not the sentient web for maximising its capabilities. Not humans for wanting to belong to a community and feel understood.

If anything’s to blame, it’s blame itself, and all the other squabbly words we waste time using instead of listening and trying to understand other points of view. New friends, united.


Erica Munro is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter and freelance editor