You can say hi without catching up
You can text an old friend without catching them up on the last four years.
Google Photos shows you a group selfie from the night of a work holiday party. You’d all stayed out a little too late and it shows. The photo makes you laugh, and the first person you want to send it to is a coworker you went through some shit with that year. You haven’t talked in four years, though, and you’re not sure what to say. You start thinking about everything you’d need to catch them up on and end up putting it off.
A text with the photo is enough to say hi. A proper catch-up can be lovely, but if that’s the only way you’re willing to get back in touch, you can go another year without saying a word to someone you still think about. The extra year probably won’t make the first message feel any less awkward.
An old friend can start to feel like a stranger
In a 2024 paper on getting back in touch with old friends, Lara Aknin and Gillian Sandstrom found that fewer than a third of participants in two studies sent a message when given the chance, even when they wanted to and thought their friend would appreciate it. In another study, people were about as reluctant to contact an old friend as they were to talk to a stranger. The researchers were asking people to send a message at a particular moment, so the number tells us about that particular opportunity rather than whether someone will ever get in touch. I do find it useful that expecting a warm reception wasn’t enough to get most people to send the note.
In a separate set of experiments by Peggy Liu and colleagues, people tended to underestimate how much someone in their social circle would appreciate an unexpected message or small gift. The person sending the message has had time to wonder whether it’s weird. The person receiving it gets a little surprise in the middle of their day. I can see how those two people come away with different ideas about how big a deal it was.
The kinds of things you used to talk about
A lot of what you used to talk about came from being in the same situation. You could text a work friend after a rough day and they already knew why you were exhausted. If you knew them from school, maybe you were both struggling with the same class. Once you don’t share that part of your life anymore, there are fewer everyday reasons to get in touch, even if you still like talking to each other. An old photo gives you a reason to say hi without either of you needing much of an update.
There are times when an ordinary conversation feels insufficient. If you owe someone an apology, a photo may feel like you’re trying to skip past it. Even when a friendship just faded, the other person may be glad to hear from you and have very little room in their life for more. It’s easier to send a note that can stand on its own if you can imagine being happy to have sent it even if nothing follows.
Someone might see the photo and text you a long update. They might also just say they’d forgotten how late everyone stayed out. I like the idea of getting to laugh about that night again, even if that’s all you end up talking about.