Summary Of The Limits Of Friendship By Maria Konnikova

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.

Technology has helped connect people and created friendships that without technology couldn’t happen. A big way for people to connect with each other is by using social media like Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. Facebook connects more of us to more of our friends and family than we have ever been connected before (Document 2). Every "Like, every Share, every comment is a way for us to renew on a tiny scale our connections with our friends (Document 2). Our phones are devices that can connect us to anyone around the world in the matter of seconds (Document 5). Technology is not only connecting us with other people it is also connecting us to more information.

In Stephen Marche’s article, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” he begins by stating the assumption that there is research suggesting that we have not in any way been more detached from one another, or lonelier, and the cause may be social media. Marche makes a point early on in the article that Facebook is the forefront of most unexpectedly lonely interactivity. That during the crisis and intensity of human loneliness, Facebook showed an attractiveness of promising greater connection. The author then goes on to provide the reader’s with statistics, but no sources cited, of how in the past 60 years the percent of humans who were living alone has gone up nearly 17 percent. Giving a presumption that Facebook may be the cause. Trying to support

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

Konnikova uses data gathered by scientists to show that as focus turns toward online friendships, people start to lose the number of meaningful real life relationships that they once had. She references the Dunbar number frequently. There are multiple stages to the Dunbar number but the largest is around one hundred and fifty. She defines this as, “people we call casual friends—the people, say, you’d invite to a large party” (236). This number was seen as the max number of friendships that someone could maintain. However, with social media, people have hundreds of friends. As people expand their range of friends, it is believed that they will lose time to interact with their real tangible friends. From this point of view it is viewed as a bad change.

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.

Social media has become ubiquitous in modern society-a vast majority of the human race devotes their time to liking, posting, and commenting on what others share about their day to day lives. Technology has permitted communication with citizens around the globe, and the world is more united than ever before. It's commonplace to see an entire family connected online all at once, keeping in touch with each other, relatives, and friends. It can be debated that such forms of communication can only enhance the bonds and relationships between humans, with supporters of technology preaching the benefits of facilitated conversations with the rest of the human race. However, social media serves only to destroy relationships, isolating people from society

The written word,now a weapon, is now digitized and feed through media. “A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon.” (Bradbury 58). Not only have books become a media revolution so has social interaction. Social media allows for connections formerly unheard. “The problem, they say, is that we spend so much time maintaining superficial connections online that we aren’t dedicating enough time or effort to cultivating deeper real-life relationships.”(WSJ). This avenue of socialization allows for discretion of the true life and person of the poster. “And even worse, the human condition is beginning to devolve. We have become addicted to the vanity of social media unable to expose our lives to the world.”(Green). This media based socialization can overtake the lives of many. “When you add it all up, the average American spends more than 10 hours a day plugged into some form of media.”(Synder). Making the human race even more technology

In the article “The Meaning of Friendship in a Social-Networked World” by Alex Pattakos, he conveys the message that social media builds a strong technological connection, but drags people’s friendships into a stagnant and trivial condition. Through Aristotle’s definition of a friend, Pattakos argues that building a “true” friendship with someone is not a quick occurrence and definitely not an effortless task. However, he implies, as observed on social media today, labeling a complete stranger a “friend” is so easy that the act of finding a friend is no longer challenging and the real nature of friendships that connects people becomes invaluable and unrewarding. Moreover, Pattakos asserts that the lack of face-to-face contact impedes real relationships from existing because social media might link people technologically, but prevents them from getting connected emotionally.

Relationships among friends are vastly different from what it used to be, and social media plays a large role in it. Whenever friends and families go out for social outings, faces are always glued to phone screens, busy letting other friends know what we are doing, and creating a distance between the friends that are actually there. “When friends become fans, what happens to intimacy?” (Orenstein 253). When friends are busy liking photos and retweeting what they just ate, it is not the same intimacy as actually sharing the moment with them. When all the attention is focused on one little screen, socializing isn’t the same as it used to be five, ten years ago. The same closeness friends receive when they share jokes are dissipating in the air slowly, the intimacy is vanishing. “On Twitter or Facebook you’re trying to express something real about who you

Every generation is shaped by the environment they live in. Influential events such as diversity, violence, and technology have impacted the lives of many millennials by being a part of their generational personality. In technology specifically, the rise in usage of social media has resulted in a global effect. Robin Dunbar, a psychologist and anthropologist, developed a number known as the “Dunbar Number” which calculates the number of people whom one could sustain a social relationship with. Since social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have allowed millennials to “keep track of people who would otherwise effectively disappear” (Konnikova 237), it may be argued that it is not as necessary to rely on face-to-face interaction for emotional fulfillment (unlike previous generations). Since millennials have grown up with the emergence of the internet and social media, they are more likely to be addicted to social media. Millennials are more vulnerable to social media addiction because they have been exposed to social media from a young age, the reward centers of the brain are activated by interaction with social media, and social media allows millennials to express their thoughts online without in-person criticism.

Having a thousand friends can be manageable, yet impossible to others. When Myspace was introduced in 2003, it dominated the internet with instant messaging. Now keeping in touch with your friends and family is easier than ever. Social media has expanded allowing people the access to communicate and connect with each other. Silver’s article “The Quagmire of Social Media Friendships” suggests that the Dunbar’s theory doesn't represent the number of friends you can maintain, “I think that is a false assertion of Dunbar's number and doesn't take into account the constant shifting nature of social networks. Not only that, but Dunbar's number was developed using personal, physical relationships rather than online ones. Online relationships are a different beast” (Silver, 5). Now in 2017 we have different media platforms such as Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr.

Social media has changed the lives of many people. Social media has especially been integral in the lives of many, as it is now possible for relatives and friends from all around the world to connect with each other through sites such as Facebook and twitter, allowing them to feel closer. “Another national study described the internet as “a catalyst for creating and maintaining friendships and family relationships”. The internet and social media allows for people to connect with people they may not connect with otherwise or even connect with people from their past that they otherwise would not have connected with. Social media also allows romantic couples to connect even when they are not with each other. Unfortunately, along with the positives of social media come negatives as well. The article Relational Quality and Media Use in Interpersonal Relationships states, The important interpersonal skills needed to have a good relationship with a person may be changing due to the use of technology (Baym 2007). While social media requires some interpersonal skills, it does not require as much as when people communicate face to face. While social media can positively affect different kinds of relationships, it can also impede them, especially romantic relationships. Romantic relationships require great interpersonal skills.

Improvements have been made in technology causing the number of users on social media to rise every day. The use of social media depicts the relationships between people and how the communication progresses. As stated by Heidemann, Klier and Probst (2012) social media cites are online communities that help individuals to bond and create relationships with each other. Therefore, social networking sites help people find others with similar interests; it helps sustain and uphold their relationships and helps people to find resources and knowledge. (Heidemann, Klier, & Probst, 2012). In this way social media helps people use their capability to organize and maintain any present relationships and aids individuals to classify a

This only reinforces the idea that a Facebook “friendship” is often perceived as empty and meaningless. Typically, when I think of someone as a “friend,” I don’t consider my Facebook friends first, but rather the people who I have recently interacted with on a more personal level. Even though one has the ability to have hundreds, or even thousands, more Facebook friends than might be feasible for real life, I do not believe that Facebook has changed the upper limits of friendship “previously set by nature” but rather serves as a supplement for real-world friendships and a breeding ground for digital friendships. Although most users have well below Professor Robin Dunbar’s upper limit of 150 friends, the “Dunbar number,” most of my Facebook friends have between 200 and 2,000 friends (The Virtual Revolution). Personally, I have 705 Facebook “friends” which includes real-world friends, digital friends, family members, acquaintances, and even some celebrities. However, I only associate with a handful of these “friends,” mostly real-world friends and family members, and I don’t consider each one of these 705 friendships the same way. A major advantage of Facebook is that it allows me to maintain a “digital friendship” with those who I’m unable to maintain a real-world friendship. I think of a “digital friendship” as one that may or may not have started on-line and has significantly more on-line interaction than in-person interaction. In contrast, a “real-world friendship”