Where have all our friends gone? I’m not talking about the selfie you posted on Instagram last week with your running club buddy (“PBs before 9am!”) or your new yoga friend who just happens to have ten thousand followers. I mean your real friends—the ones you’ve known since school, Brownie camp or university. The “normal” people.

It would be easy to blame the algorithm for making us nervous about our pictures reaching the outermost corners of the internet. Which, though true, feels like an excuse. The real issue, I think, is how social media encourages us to behave: to be the shiniest, most exaggerated versions of ourselves. We’re rewarded for who we know and how well we show them off, which means sharing your normcore friends isn’t seen as cool, or aspirational. Even solo selfies are preferable. “Most of the time I just look like I live alone and sometimes go to the beach,” says Clare, 41.

For so long, social media was the place where our most meaningful friendships lived. We all followed one another—real people we knew in real life. Our Facebook albums were full of group shots, everyone hugging as though we were in the Friends title sequence. It was cool to show off as many of your mates as possible—that performative element has always been there—but at least they were your actual mates, warts and all. Now, they’re disappearing. How many times have you looked at someone’s Instagram and wondered where their real friends are?

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