The Limits Of Friendship By Maria Konnikova

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

Humans are naturally social beings. Jeremy Rifkin states, “We are, it appears, the most social of animals and seek intimate participation and companionship with our fellows (115).” The article continues to explain how humans seem to connect through emotions and that inner, neurological need for human interaction. When one person feels pain, joy, or sadness, they want to share their feelings with another person. Hence, the needing fulfillment of social interaction. However, the use of social media does not mean humans have become less social. Even though social media has introduced a new way of interacting and communicating, studies have shown that people are becoming more

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.

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.

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.

I feel that friendships have changed dramatically from what they used to be years ago. I can remember being a child who didn’t have a phone and the only talking I did with my friends was at school. The text message has taken the effort out of a friendship. When we wanted to talk with a friend we had to actually have a face-to-face meeting and spend quality time with them. Now with a few key strokes and a little bit of time, we can send a long paragraph of what information we are wanting to share. The text message has enabled us to spend less time with the physical relationship with our friends and give us more time to be able to do the more important things in our life. William Deresiewicz states “Friendship is devolving, in other words, from a relationship to a feeling” and I could not agree more. The amount of effort we put into a friendship is defined by how much time we have available to spend on our Facebook page talking to others.

Today’s young adults have a lack of communication with friends and family because of technology such as social media, video games or television. In our society, parlor walls can be seen as those commodities. The large flat screen tv’s or IPads are today’s enthusiast. “Social media in our country and the globalizing world has become the voice, eye, ear, heart, and memory of the individuals. It has aspects which strengthen, weaken and include communication between the individuals and also it provides convenience for time and place.” This, according to TNS Digital Life Research that carried out a study in 2011 and held 1.938.059.098 people that were online. Researchers were able to test how many people prefer to communicate through social media or rather be involved in some sort of social media instead of actually going out and interacting. These studies show and give a glimpse of how many people are more interested to spend time on social media instead of building new relationships. Bradbury’s society and our society and similar because of the lack of communication we have because of some aspects of technology that are similar, which are the parlor walls and social media, television and video games.

With the rapid growth of social media it is becoming very effortless to determine the type of characteristics someone holds based off of what they post and with whom they interact with. In Maria Konnikova’s The Limits Of Friendship, she furthers her readers knowledge about the use of social media and why it is important for organizations to have them. Generally, every person and organization obtain some form of a social media account that outlines what values they promote. Make A Wish Foundation is a very prominent worldwide organization which enhances the lives of sick children with serious conditions by giving them a wish. Looking over their twitter will give a great insight on how they enrich everyday lives by posting tweets and photos which also display the ambition and size of this organization which makes that possible. Make A Wish promotes giving happiness and a sense of life to an unfortunate child in an attempt to have its organizational values support it’s name.

The article “Social Media as Community” “We no longer lose social ties over our lives; we have Facebook friends forever.” (Keith Hampton) Social media has created amazing apps that let us meet people that are exactly how we are ourselves. They have helped many students get relationships that they thought would never happen. “There is little evidence that social media is responsible for a trend of isolation, or a loss of intimacy and social support.” “Social Networking Sites and Our lives.” On the internet there is little evidence that social media has caused an isolation. The internet has made it where we can talk to people far from here that are just like us and usually people don’t lose friends that are exactly like

Instant communication is an necessary part modern of life. Buried behind my everyday technology, I am able to communicate and stay up-to-date with friends’ lives without face-to-face interactions. Social media seems to eliminate the need to think about what is being said or the effect of the communication on readers. Countless hours spent tweeting do not require any more thought than how to simply make clever comments for the public to read. The only real way to dig deeper is to actually make an effort to overcome what has now become the awkwardness of talking directly to an online “friend.” A willingness to go beyond the false relationship of social media is important to broadening the understanding of self and the world.

The emergence of new communication tools such as phones, televisions, and computers along with internet are constantly changing the way people live and communicate. Many new information technology, especially the internet, pulled distance between people closer because human communication will no longer be constrained by time and space. People can talk through the internet or participate in online discussion group at every corner of the world; thus, enhanced human social connections. However, this is not what every human believes. People who opposed these thinking tend to believe that the internet is what lead to human outliers – isolated -- since people spend daily social activities times on the internet. 人们已把网络科技当做是自己不可少的一部分。所以有人失去了面对面交流的能力。

Face to face relationships are very important because through contact we are getting live interaction, trust, honesty, and integrity. Face to face conversations are more positive and more reliable than friendships online. In cyber space you convers ate with friends but some will not acknowledge the friendship in public. Social media is slowly taking away from face to face relationships, because we contact our family and friends on the computer screen. We are typing while looking at the screen instead of seeing facial expressions. Therefore, we aren’t sure if they are interpreting what we are saying in a negative or positive way.

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

The label, “Social Media”, is due to its ability to encourage people to be more social and communicative through the internet. Yet, it is now known that the name might not live up to its expectation. With less face-to-face interaction, relationships and communication skills are being sacrificed. Although one may have one thousand