Facebook: The End of Friendship As We Know It Essay

In his article, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” Stephen Marche argues that Facebook is the vital cause for loneliness and is luring people away from social capital. According to Marche, social networking isolates individuals and creates distance, mostly amongst family members. For some, it is not only isolation but rather social loneliness. The author claims that health can also be effected by loneliness. Nowadays, due to very little verbal person to person communication, he writes that people have never been so separated from one another because of social media. Facebook users, Marche argues, have an addiction to profoundly visit their account constantly leading to the feeling of loneliness and in most cases depression. The author claims that social networking, instead of demolishing isolation, is unknowingly spreading it. Ultimately, However, Stephen’s argument fails to convince due to his abundant false assumptions and the articles confusing organization.

In the last ten to fifteen years accompanying the dawn of social media, means of communication among friends and strangers have been easier than ever. Since its creation in 2004, Facebook has grown into the largest social media site on the Internet with 30 million users and counting. The ability to catch up with former high school friends who are now across the country or see how an aunt in Pittsburgh has been doing since the birth of her son are now as simple as the click of a mouse. However, the amount of “friends” acquired on social media may not be an accurate reflection of how many close relationships one truly shares. In an article from Bigthink.com titled “Do You Have Too Many Facebook Friends?”, Steven Mazie gathers research from Pew Research Center about statistics surrounding Facebook

In “The Limits of Friendship” by Maria Konnikova, social media has significantly changed the way we interact with friends and family. Everybody thinks that using social media is the best way to talk to friends and family, however, in my opinion, they are wrong because it doesn’t give you the face-to-face connections we need as humans for social interaction. On the other hand, the great thing about using social media is you can connect with more people, but in a superficial kind of way. Therefore, we do not get the face-to-face interactions with our friends and family. We, the people that are addicted to social media, learn that without face-to-face conversations we wouldn’t have a normal “social” life outside of social media. The question

Another effect is loneliness is not a matter of external conditions but rather more of a psychological state, which can cause neuroticism, or anxiety with due time. For example, John Cacioppo, the director of the center for cognitive and social neuroscience at the University of Chicago, says the epidemic of loneliness is affecting the basic functions of human physiology. And in one experiment, Cacioppo confirmed “The greater the proportion of online interactions, the lonelier you are.”

We gather less. And when we gather, our bonds are less meaningful and less easy,” (603), when in reality, Facebook and other forms of social media can actually help us to gather more. For instance, Marche points out that, “...if social media let you organize a game of football among your friends, that’s healthy.” This is, of course, if it is used correctly. However, if it is used incorrectly, such as ignoring your friends for it, then that is unhealthy (608).

In Stephen Marche article “Is Facebook making us lonely?” the author explores the effect of technology and Facebook, specifically social media, on people’s lives. One of Marche’s main points is that the technology has become more advanced. In just one click of the button we can find out what is going on in our country as well as the outside world. We are isolated from the real world and one another since we do not have face-to-face interactions. Marche contributes his findings to the rise in social media which is Facebook. He believed that the more connected we are to social media, the lonelier we become. . Facebook has created a fear that is interfering with our real friendships, distancing us from one another and making us lonelier. Another

Even e-mail is now considered an outdated form of communication. For many, myself included, it has become easier to wrap a conversation by saying, "Look me up on Facebook." Director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, Sherry Turkle offers the following, "The new technologies allow us to 'dial down ' human contact, to titrate its nature and extent" (Turkle 237). Now, allow me to clarify. I do not have, nor have I ever had a Facebook account, but you will not know that until you search for me. As a contributor for The New York Times, Alice Mathias indicates, "Facebook purports to be a place for human connectivity, but it 's made us more wary of human confrontation" (Matias 230). Ms. Mathias captures the very essence of my actions. And the reason why I choose to avoid conflict and appear cordial when catching up with you. If we were being honest with each other, we would have acknowledged that neither of us have any intention of interacting again. Many people similar to myself, socially awkward and insecure, have also adapted to use these services as a social buffer. I can ask you to connect with me without actually granting you access to me. Your request to "friend me" could potentially remain in my inbox forever. And if we should ever bump into each other again, I might conveniently tell you how it must not have come through to my inbox. For me personally, I will never have to worry about any of it, something I am truly thankful for. If I had

In her blog “ The Fakebook Generation,” later to be published in the New York Times on October 6, 2007, Alice Mathias enters the topic of the most used social networking service worldwide, Facebook. Mathias debates on Facebook’s claim of being a forum for “genuine personal and professional connections” (438) and tries to influence her readers to ask themselves if the website really promotes human relationships. Alice Mathias, a 2007 graduate of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire has wrote several more columns before, in which one of them was even awarded the Waterhouse Research Award.

So yes, it appears Facebook may play a small role in loneliness, however, the author does not explicitly state that Facebook is the only culprit. He is eager to recite numerous facts about loneliness and its negative effects but, it is hard for me to agree that Facebook is the sole contributor, if

It is accepted that social network sites enable individuals to conduct interactions with different types of users within the system, which can build online relationships with others. Castells (1996) states that each individual can be seen as a node within the network spaces, while the network society can be constructed by the different connections of nodes. As being a special network of the society, SNSs allow people to build personal relationships and networks with other users. In a board sense, the term ‘friendship’ can be used to describe the online relationships on SNSs without the limitations of face-to-face friendships. Spencer and Pahl (2006) defines this kind of friendship as friend-like relationship. Chambers (2013) also argues that there is no accident that the term ‘friendship’ can be employed to describe all social connections on social network sites. Thus, the traditional concept of friendship has changed from physical and intimate relationships to conceptual and virtual relationships in the SNSs context.

In Curtis Silver’s essay titled “The Quagmire of Social Media Friendships,” He describes the realization of what a true friend is. With millions of people on social media, anyone can feel as though they have achieved rock star status. This is the ruse social networking sites like Facebook and twitter cause. Having thousands of “friends” on social media accounts has changed the true meaning on how people connect on a personal level. The question is, is it even possible for people to believe they have that many friends? Let alone being able to manage a real relationship that actually embodies the meaning of friendship.

One day I was going through my Facebook profile, and I recognized I was friends with five hundred and eighty people. I was dumbfounded by the great number of individuals I am associated with through my profile. I went through the list to identify several people who I have never met in real life. Most of them were schoolmates, college mates and individuals I had mutual friends with. I was Facebook friends with a majority of them, just because we were part of the same organization. I went to the same school as Ben, but till now I never talked to him, ironically I know what he does with his life through his posts. Social media, to my opinion, gives an illusion that the five hundred and eighty people are actually your friends. In reality they are your “online friends” and your real friends can be categorized into three categories: acquaintance, friend, and best friend.

In this essay I will talk about how the term “friendship” cannot be defined because no one can judge other people’s personal value of what a friend is to them. Friendship is used in many contexts because of technology and how it is used from different levels of personal, formal, and informal meaning I believe that “friendship” can be on all three levels. The personal level is the friends who are intimate with you. The personal term for friendships is “intimacy”. The second level that I believe the “friendship” term can be easily used is the informal approach. The informal level categorizes the acquaintances and familiar people that a person knows, but is not that close with. For example, a worker knows his coworker, but is not that close as friends, but can establish a closer “friendship” if it is mutual, thus the word friendship can be placed here. The third level is the formal which means that complete strangers are involved. Through technology, all three levels can be reached separately or together in stages of friendship. Although these are the stages, not one person can define a person’s personal value of what a true friend is.

In today’s technological age, the Internet is widely used all over the world from casual entertainment to formal business. Amongst its use, social networking sites serve its function to facilitate communication across the world, in which users can express their opinions and information without any restriction. While advocates might suggest that social networking sites will improve social interactions as people are armed with the ability to express themselves without censorship, naysayers refute that such personal information publicised on social networking sites have paralysed social interaction and information is released openly without regulations. Facebook, for instance, is a social medium that has an influential ability to dissolve

Social Networking sites (SNS) give individuals the chance to friend individuals from their general system of relatives, colleagues, and different associates. Much has been made of the utilization of "friend" in this connection. The individuals who are recorded as friends on SNS might surely be friends in the conventional sense, however they can likewise be old colleagues (e.g., from secondary school) or exceptionally easygoing associations between individuals who have never have met in individual. Some stress that as an aftereffect of utilizing these services, individuals may get to be more secluded and substitute less significant relations for genuine social backing. Others accept this may improve and extend connections. Here underneath are our discoveries on the majority of this.