How Facebook changed our friendships

Facebook has built its business around our relationships - but as the site turns 12, are we just too busy for the emotional labor of 'real' friends?

When I was a little girl, everyone at summer camp was going to be best friends forever. A few weeks away can feel like a lifetime to an adolescent, and the minor trials of those times - homesickness, secrets, social crises, skinned knees - loomed large. Camp would conclude with group sing-alongs, tears, the exchange of addresses, and earnest promises that the closeness and unity formed in those endless sunny days would last forever.

Of course, it never did. Reality set in once you got home to your parents and the regular neighborhood kids, and your thoughts turned to new notebooks for the school year and whether you got prettier while you were away and whether your crushes were going to notice. You always meant to write, meant it in your heart, but you never did. I still vividly remember getting in the mail a package from a camp friend containing a pen-scribbled loyal letter, pages long, and a tiny box of plastic earrings - I received it with equal measures of shock and guilt, never having expected such an earnest delivery on her promise, and wholly unprepared to reply.