Faux Friendship By William Deresiewicz Analysis

Scott Brown establishes a humorous tone, focuses on specific diction and language, and utilizes figurative language to develop his argument that modern day social networking with Facebook in particular drives the collection of meaningless friendships and prevents people from undergoing the natural process of letting go of friends. Brown appeals to his audience through his use of tone. Right at the beginning of the essay, he casually asks, “Hey, want to be my friend?” (par 1).

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 Sherman Alexie’s poem “The Facebook Sonnet” Alexie brings up a controversy, over all social media because it absorbs society into the depths of dark unknowns and prevents physical face to face communication. Even though Facebook allows people to stay up to date with friends, whether they be new or deep-rooted, the platform tears its users away from substantial social interaction with others. People can connect to the world by the click of the mouse and know what is going on at any given time. Social media requires ones everlasting attention, and the addiction is almost comparable to that of a cigarette, one cannot give it up and is always thinking about when one can check it again. People become so caught up in trying to perceive what everyone else is doing, they forget that they have a reality to live and fail to maintain real relationships. “The Facebook Sonnet” belittles the social media platform by emphasizing how obsessed society is with making themselves look perfect for the screen. One is either gripping to their past or obsessing over the present.

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

Maria Konnikova's essay "The Limits of Friendship," analyzes the impact of social media on close relationships, addressing the people impacted by social media use. This essay published in The New Yorker, a weekly magazine with scholarly authors, to inform the public on social media's impact on our lives. She finds that social media has created a dependency on technology and online interactions. Konnikova strives to inform that social media is decreasing close relationships, and persuades that it will impact our future. She argues on the impact of increased dependency on social media on the Dunbar number, hindering the development of future generations. Konnikova succeeds using strong logic and scientific reason as well as appealing to emotions; however, she fails to prove her credibility over the topic and instead relies on the credibility of Robin Dunbar.

Adjetives to define friendship, as trust, caring, kindness, or compassion have been replaced by “likes”, and being “on call” as Turkle defines the way people is attached to their smart phones waiting for somebody who needs a comment or a like. Maintaining friendship now is not a question of conversation face to face, or a call, instead is a text message, a message that should be short and edited. People consider that this way or interaction is more efficient and less emotional than a real more demanding conversation. The author sustains that we are moving from friendship to a sense of

Maria Konnikova, a New York Times best-selling author, is known for contributing scientific and psychological factors into her works, which has been published on several online publications such as Salon, the Atlantic, the New Republic, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, etc. (Konnikova 235). In her essay “Limits of Friendship”, she goes into depth about the number of friends that one can have overall based off Robin Dunbar theory and how technology is impacting not only his theory, but our social lives also. Based on Robin Dunbar research, he believes that a typical individual has one hundred and fifty people in their social group in which he differentiates in his “rule of three”. As technology advances, the way individuals interact with one another is through social media and their smart devices, but we’re slowly losing our focus on how to socialize with one another. Technology is making it easier to build relationships with those around the world, but harder with those around us.

In Faux Friendship, by William Deresiewicz, his argument is that friendships in today’s time are different from earlier times. He argues in his essay that social media websites have destroyed our chances of having real friendships. Also, he claims that technology in general is making us stray away from the actual time it we can spend with real friends. We believe that having more Facebook friends makes us feel good about the number of friends we have. Are these truly our friends?

The article “I’m So Totally, Digitally, Close To You (Brave New World of Digital Intimacy)” (2002) is written by Clive Thompson, who is also a blogger and columnist. The author aims to explain the users’ attraction of Facebook, Twitter and other forms of “incessant online contact” through his text. Since social networking has become a nearly ubiquitous aspect of human contemporary life, Thomson has effectively illustrated the invasion of the social media into human daily lives, how people are commanded by it. He later goes on to explore the benefits of social networking sites and a few challenges of the usage assumptions.

The essay Stephen Marche wrote “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely” is talking about with the technology what the society looks like now, and social media like Facebook and twitter have made us more densely network than ever.

Are people still feeling lonely even though they are connected online? Stephen Marche, in his article " Is Facebook Making Us Lonely ?", explains the correlation between using Facebook and loneliness. Facebook has been used worldwide for a long time and it has always been an interesting topic to debate on. Some people argue that Facebook is harmful by isolating people from others around, and that using Facebook might make people less satisfied, sadder and lonelier than ever before. Conversely, I and other people think this most popular social network is great, it makes the world more open and connected. Facebook is useful, it does not separate or make people lonely because Facebook is just a tool and everything depends on how it is used.

The author illustrates in her blog the power and impact Facebook had on the population by convincing to be “a place of human connectivity,” but

Do you ever pause for a second and ask yourself who your real friends are, and what makes them your friends? The way friendships are viewed has changed over the past centuries. There is a basic definition of what a friendship is, but people have their qualifications of what makes someone their friend. We get to decide who to make our friends. Friendships should be an important part of our life because that is where relationships begin. The view of friendships should not continue to be less important because then everyone we meet will not have a meaning in our life. William Deresiewicz asserts in his article “Faux Friendship” that friendships have become less personal and less verbal; things such as electronics and social media are factors of

At first, I agreed with Stephen Marche, author of “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?”, but after doing some of my own research I would like to retract my original position. We cannot blame technology for our own human condition. However Stephen Marche begs to differ. “At the forefront of all this unexpectedly lonely interactivity is Facebook, with 845 million users and $3.7 billion in revenue last year” (Marche). Stephen Marche believes Facebook is making us lonely because it is changing the dynamics of traditional friendships (Marche). He also blames Facebook for the rise in human isolation. From 1950 to 2010 a 17 percent increase in households of one were reported (Marche). Does Marche not realize that many happy Americans