Facebook, or ‘Meta’ (eye roll), has really ruined the art of birthday wishes. There is nothing special about typing ‘Happy Birthday’ in response to an algorithm. It was a huge pet peeve of mine when I had a Facebook account. Can you type a few more letters than just ‘Happy Birthday’? Anything more personal? I’m guessing some of those Facebook friends are actually just acquaintances and maybe even some barely that. Robin Dunbar, the Oxford evolutionary psychologist originally suggested that the most relationships we can maintain at once was 150, “Dunbar’s number” as it’s referred to. He’s since refined that, but my point is that if you have 1,000 connections on Facebook it’s likely the only thing they really know about you is your birthday and hence you get “Happy Birthday”. Why bother?

But I’m probably being a little too much of a card sending purist. Dunbar has since refined the 150 number and is now focused on ‘circles of friendship’. The inner circle is likely a spouse or romantic partner, then you have friends you cry to, additional close friends, 50 is the weekend BBQ crowd and 150-200 are the wedding invitees. People you care about, but perhaps don’t see that often.

Maybe it’s OK to skip sending a card to an outer circle individual.

But it’s NOT OK to skip on the ……wait for it…..100-150 circle friends. What do you think? Is that too much work? Too many cards?

I looked back over my planner, where I list the names of people I’ll send birthday cards to. My pro tip is that I use a birthday book to record the birthdays, refer to the book before the start of the month and list out in my planner all those who will receive a greeting card from me. I was gifted this book when I was in High School, so you can imagine a few people have dropped off the list.

(In fact, I can’t even remember some of the people listed. That’s what age does to you and a good reason to keep a journal. But that’s another blog.)

Turns out, so far this year, I’ve sent an average of 16.3 cards a month. Given that, I’m on pace to send about 195 birthday cards this year. I guess I’m in line with my estimate. This isn’t really scientific, but I will tell you I came up with the 100-150 number before I pulled out my planner and did the math.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to advocate a social media blackout. But just because we have social media, it doesn’t mean we have to abandon all written communication. They’re not mutually exclusive. It does take a little planning. It takes some effort. But that’s the point. At least for the inner circle people.