"REMOVE from friends." This is no ordinary button. One click and I have the power to erase a person from my life. In late fall, I had around 400 friends on Facebook. Today, I have 134. Click. Make that 133. When Facebook first entered my life in 2005, I panicked(, ) that my friend count was too low. If I wasn't properly connected, how would anyone see my clever quote ? Who would wish me a happy birthday? I accepted and sent out friend requests without a second thought and soon accumulated 391 friends. There is an appeal to being able to communicate with someone or just "thumbs  up" a photo rather than make real conversation. "It's comforting and it's easy," said Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University, who studies the way people communicate online." There's a sense of belonging in it. It's a sense of community in a generation where community has sort of  disappeared." However, I don't talk to half of these people in the online community. There are some I would avoid if I met them on the street. Click. 132. I decided to rid my account of any "friend" that...well, wasn't. Sound easy? You try it. Look at who you're dealing with: family, friends, classmates, crushes , acquaintances... With every click of the "Remove from friends" button, you risk burning a bridge, losing a contact and missing an opportunity. So every time I go to click the button, my heart hurts. However, I'm not the only one who has experienced a Faceboook friend refreshing. The New Oxford American Dictionary announces its "Word of the Year" each year, and last year, "unfriend" made the cut   (though I'll still stick with "defriend"). When I started my mission , _ . Most were surprised by how easily they could cut hundreds of connections without thinking twice. "Oh my God, I defriended like 600 people today. I feel so good!" my friend Sarah messaged. Dana, a close friend from high school, and I battled it out to see who could get our counts lower. She wins at 123. To some, it's poor "netiquette " to defriend. But to me, it's the stage of life when we hold onto the people who count, the people who impact you. The writer worried about her friend count in 2005 because   _  .
no one would wish her a happy birthday it was the first time she had made friends online she had only 391 online friends at that time she was eager to make connections