The Importance Of Friendship On The Internet

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

When we use technology to interact with others, we lose the ability to express the right emotions that you would express in a face-to-face conversation. When you tell someone how you feel over social media, it is entirely different than how you would tell it to them in person. Emotions that are expressed over social media, can be taken a completely different way than it would be taken if the conversation was face-to-face. For example, if you were having a conversation with a close friend, if you said something sarcastic like “You are such a weirdo.” That message could mean it is funny to you but it could be offensive to the person you are texting. In “The Limits of Friendship”, Konnikova says “We do have a social-media equivalent-sharing, liking, knowing that all your friends have looked at

In “Stop Googling. Let’s Talk.” by Sherry Turkle a Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been studying the psychology of online connectivity for more than 30 years. For the past five years, she has been focusing on topics: What has happened to face‐ to‐face conversation in a world where so many people say they would rather text than talk, families, friendships and romance. She has also studied schools, universities and workplaces. Among this topics she has talked and provided studies on how we have become distant from “who we are.” She reports that we as a society have lost a lot of virtues as a society such as a lack of empathy for one another, solitude, and communication with one another. As the “digital world” continues to grow we as a society continue to grow with it and apart from one another. Sherry also emphasizes that we

A prevalent issue regarding social media and interactions exists between researchers and social network users. Social media is currently changing how relationships between people are created. Relationships can exist through people across the world through social media and can produce more emotional bonds with friends that you can see everyday. On the other hand, social media also could present conflicts due to the fact that some of these relationships can become unhealthy and that people could change to be more dependent on internet friends, becoming introverted.

In Stephen Marche’s article, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” points out many reasons to which social media is making us lonely. One reason why social media is making us lonely is because we are so focused on the internet and we forget what is going on around us. Another reason is because we can see how our friends on Facebook are having a great life and we become lonely because our life is not as interesting as theirs. Even though I disagree with the author’s conclusion that social media is making us lonely, there is ample evidence to support my belief that the internet can also be a tool for communication.

The book talks about how internet can deepen friendships, using social media to become more aware of a friend’s day to day life. (Berger, 204, p. 551-552). Social media helps most friendships, I always loved seeing the pictures my friends would post while we were apart as it almost allowed me to be with them or sometimes my friends would post pictures of us together just to say they missed me. As my friends and I have graduated high school and entered college, we may not see eachother very much within a year. Social media is one thing that allows us to always keep in touch. We may not see eachother everyday like before but things like snapchat allow us to stay in touch. Technology really has been able to form and improve friendships. Along with keeping in touch, social media also helped me reconnect with friends Id lost contact with. My senior year of high school one of my friends from second grade reached out to me via social media. We met up one day and out friendship rekindled, I gained another valuable friendship because of social media. According to the book the fear of internet causing isolation is false, if anything internet users seem to have more friends than nonusers (Berger,

With 50% of users logging on to Facebook everyday and more than 35 million users updating their status’s everyday (Facebook a, 2010), it posses the question what effect are social networking sites, mainly Facebook, having on our friendships? Are we extending our social networking and enriching them? Or are the effects of the ease and accessibility of a ‘friend’ demeaning our relationships?

‘Friends and family tried to help, but our relationships had changed in the face of grief,’ she says. ‘Most did not know how to deal with the situation’” (Stich 2). Also computers help those who are from a low- income household and when they are given internet access it helps them become better readers. In addition, Facebook makes shyness disappear. “Facebook is for shy people as water is for the thirsty” (Rosenwald 1). Sometimes the internet improves lives in building relationships, and can be used as a bridge. “Facebook is a crutch, feeling more comfortable with digital friends than personal ones” (Rosenwald 2). But are these the only good things related with using the internet?

When online, people are blocked off from hearing and seeing these non-verbal suggestions. “As human beings, our only real method of connection is through authentic communication. Studies show that only 7% of communication is based on the written or verbal word. A whopping 93% is based on nonverbal body language.” (Tardanico). This can be a real problem to society because if a person acts as if he or she was fine online, they could really be hiding their true feelings, and others would never know. “Awash in technology, anyone can hide behind the text, the e-mail, the Facebook post or the tweet, projecting any image they want and creating an illusion of their choosing.” (Tardanico). The person may be feeling upset, depressed, or suicidal, and all others can see is the way they pretend to be online. Without nonverbal cues, others will never know the true emotions behind the computer or phone screen. Another issue if that “Soon, they will neglect their family and friends as they are too engrossed with the social networking sites…” (Social Networking-Destroyed Communication Essay). Essentially, social networking sites have caused families to slowly drift farther apart. As well, family bonds and friendships are being worn down and broken. Social networking has caused the importance of face-to-face communication to lessen; now we depend on little emoticons and the way the person

Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Instagram, and Flicker was invented to keep us in touch and keep us closer to our family and friends. But according to How Facebook ruins Friendships “we took our friendship online” (Bernstein). First we began communicating more by email than by phone and then switched to instant messaging or texting. By joining social Medias online

With this, online friendships are a self-seeking prophecy. This idea diverges from the original studies of online relationships, which discovered that internet users are lonelier than those with less access to the internet (Tufecki 7). The more recent study of the hyperpersonal nature of today’s society online, known as “Seek and Ye Shall Find”, found the opposite to be true, emphasizing that individuals who believe that online friendships and strong relationships can be gained through those networks have much higher odds (52%) of acquiring new friends (Tufecki 7) and benefit most from online interactions. The hyperpersonal nature of the cyberspace comes to be seen as a space for people to be freer of social judgment due to the mediated communication deemphasizing appearance and shifting its focus towards

Trying to find a good friend is like finding a four-leaf clover; it's hard to find, but lucky to have. The term friendship is a unique bond between two individuals—whether it’s a charming boy and a geeky girl, an elder woman and a young adult, or even between a cat and a dog. Friendship takes no form, instead it is the individual trust toward others. Dating back to the creation of the human species, people were familiar with the idea of companionship, in addition of being a companion, it relies on a sense of comfort and protection. Presently, people still share that bond of comfort and protection toward others, but the term companionship has changed into what is now known today as friendship. The world is currently evolving into a digital era, a generation where everyone and everything are connected by the power of computers, including meeting new people across the world where it’s impossible to meet in person. However, even though it’s easily accessible to make friends online, it can never favor those who live locally. The reason why is because in the digital world, people are highly deceptive and are limited in communication while in comparison to those who lives locally. However, it isn’t wrong to make friends online, even though, some of them are misleading. It’s more suitable to have friends locally as they have better communication efficiency, living proof of actual identity, and as well of physically spending quality time together.

Social media improves the way people communicate with others. It allows them to meet new people. At the click of a button, millions of strangers all over the world who would have never met otherwise are able to connect with each other. Many people believe that internet friends are not as valuable as real life friendships. However with websites like “skype” and instant messaging sites, long distance friendships can be as intimate as real life friendships because social media allows friends to see each other face to face and spend quality time together whenever they want to. Because of this, internet friendships should no longer be considered taboo and should be seen as normal human relationships, “It’s entirely possible to have hundreds of

Social network sites (SNSs) such as such as Friendster, CyWorld, and MySpace allow individuals to present themselves, articulate their social networks, and establish or maintain connections with others (Ellison, 2007). These sites could be used for work related situation, romance, connecting with individuals with shared interest, or creating a connection amongst college students. Facebook enables its users to present themselves in an online profile, accumulate ‘‘friends’’ who can post comments on each other’s pages, and view each other’s profiles (Ellison, 2007). Individuals can write on the wall of friends, send private message, comment on posts, as well as chat via instant messaging. Much of the early research on online communities assumed that individuals using these systems would be connecting with others outside their pre-existing social group or location, liberating them to form communities around shared interests, as opposed to shared geography (Ellison, 2007).

Social sites are a beneficial way to communicate, however, it affects a person’s ability to communicate face to face with others. Many people spend much of their leisure time online rather than connecting with the offline world. In a specific article, a participant spends several hours each day updating her profile instead of talking face to face with others (Livingstone 399). Being online more than offline, decreases people’s abilities to interact with others who are disconnected. Furthermore, by communicating online also contributes to misrepresentation, which leads to misreading a text, leading to mixed emotions of a person who wrote the message. Therefore, social networking reduces an emotional aspect between people as it is hard to tell what a person is feeling through text. In addition, people lack confidence talking to an individual physically rather than virtually. In an