National Unfriend Day
In the realm of social media, occasionally parting ways with unfamiliar faces can be refreshingly liberating.
Leverage National Unfriend Day to promote digital wellness, social media management tools, and authentic connection narratives that resonate with users fatigued by online clutter.
- Spring-clean your feed: A guide to curating healthier social media habits
- Why unfriending isn't rude—it's self-care: Reframe digital boundaries
- Tools to manage your network: Apps that make unfriending easier and less awkward
“Unfriend”…maybe we should just start by clearing up how and when “to (un)friend” even became a verb to begin with, after hundreds of years of the word “friend” being a plain old noun you used to describe someone you had a good, close relationship with, and the word “unfriend” not even being in the realm of existence. Oxford Dictionary’s 2009 word of the year was, in fact, “unfriend”, which it defines as, “verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.”
Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford’s US dictionary program, explained Dictionary’s rather controversial choice, saying, “It has both currency and potential longevity. In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year.”
Comedian Jimmy Kimmel founded National Unfriend Day in 2014 to combat the growing trend of social media profiles collecting ‘friends’ like Pokemon cards, amassing a ridiculous amount of ‘friends’ they barely know at all in short periods of time. Getting rid of distant acquaintances on National Unfriend Day can help streamline your internet experience, allowing you to use your profiles to keep in touch with people you really care about, and preserving the true definition of ‘friend.’