William Deresiewicz's Faux Friendship

Picture this, kids are sitting around a table on their devices,not saying a word to each other. Today's society is replacing friends with technology. "Is Technology Killing Our Friendships?" states that people are constantly checking their virtual world and not interacting with each other. It also states they are spending too much time online and mistaking real friendships for online

The traditional idea of American friendship has evolved drastically over time. In this age, no longer do you see the close group of friends chatting at the ‘Central Perk Café’ or engaging in many misadventures in the basement of Foreman’s house, such as they did in ‘That 70’s Show’. The aged image of a group of friends and their wise, perceptive teacher, Mr. Feeney, happily standing in the halls of John Quincy Adams middle school is fading out. This overused 1970’s-1990’s idea of friendship no longer applies to most American friendships today because our culture has swayed into a more modern viewpoint, due to the

In the modern age friendship comes in many different shapes and sizes. There's the good and there's the bad. You might even find some types of friendships surprising, for example an "entrepreneurial relationship". In the book "Of Mice and Men" Lennie and George are friends, but not very good friends. George is unfortunately friends with Lennie for the wrong reasons.

Friendship is one of the most valuable components in life. Friendship has the ability to change lives in a positive way. Friendship changes people’s views on life to a more positive outlook. “True friendship is when someone knows you better than yourself and takes a position in your best interests in a crisis. Friendship goes beyond sharing time together, and it is long lasting.” (Friends.com). As we spend a lot of time with our friends, friendship opens our minds to different ways of viewing the world. Unfortunately, sometimes strong barriers may be placed by those who see two people’s friendship as a threat; since people are influenced by their friends, friendship could make people question what

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?

Humans are social creatures who need and want to communicate with one another, and technology helps fulfill that need. Although technology, specifically texting and social media, has risen question to whether technology is killing our friendships. Though many believe that technology is tearing our friendships apart, it is actually strengthening them and keeping us closer together than ever before. Through technology, people have the power to stay in touch with friends all over the world, create new friendships with people who share similar interests, and feel closer to the friends we already have.

How do you use technology? Are you the kind of person that uses technology in a good way such as research, to write a paper etc? Or are you the kind of person that abuses technology and uses technology as a way to hide away from the world and be more self involved? Turkle believes that people use technology to escape from the world and become more self involved. She also believes that the Internet and technology allows us to present ourselves the way we want the world to see us rather than who we really are . Deresiewicz believes that the Internet destroys friendships.

Faux Intellectualism Friendship. Everyone has a friend, their own interpretation of friendship, and most people nowadays have close friends. The close friends that we have are considered “true friends.” Social media and such have diluted the term “friend” in recent years because of labels that platforms like Facebook call your followers or connections. Friendship is defined more like acquaintanceship as far as a textbook definition goes, so what really is a friend?

Many believe friendship is one of the most important values in life, and that you need not be the same age, sex nor type to attain friendship. One of the most primary and discernable philosophies of friendship is “Don’t judge a book by its cover, it is what is inside that matters”. That means that if you don’t know them, don’t judge them. Yet, too often are we influenced by society, and become so biased to see the true beauty of friendship: You can be friends with anyone. Whether it is another person, an animal, or your imagination.

Though in our fast paced society and easy access to anything, anywhere, at any time with the click of a button; many sources confirm that traditional friendships are still important. Through out life, our types of friends, as well as the amount of friends varies as we grow and change. Our lives become busier, we move towns, we have new jobs, kids, and with all these changes we find that we often have to adopt to the changes as well as sometimes make new friends.

In many cases, friendship can be either a primary relationship in our life or a secondary in our life. Essayist, Anais Nin put it beautifully when she said, "Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born." Though some people who are natural loners are fairly happy without them, most

Friendship is not simply a "relationship", knowing someone, conversing with that person, or dealing with that person in business, school, or in casual acquaintance. True friendship is not just a "relationship", but self-sacrificing love. A friend is also one who supports, sympathizes, and is a person in whom you can confide. There are unique qualities that a person must have to be considered a friend.

Friends can be defined as the closet and most important people in an individual’s life. These individuals are ones that we rely on to share information, support each other, to be honest, and share common interests. Friendship is considered mutual between both parties. Each individual influences another’s beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and provides satisfaction. Friendships are support in an adult’s life that contains less emotions and no sex. Having a positive relationship can improve both parties self-esteem. People tend to have more friends in early adulthood compared to late adulthood (Kenrick, Neuber, & Cialdini, 2010). Online friends that are built through social media resources develop trust among parties by their character, actions, recommitment, and situational factors. These are comparable to face to face relationships. These websites tend to be more for individuals who are lonely. Men and women’s friendships are seen differently in mid to late adulthood that is similar to early adulthood. Women friendships are ones that individuals feel comfortable with confiding personal information. These relationships lean to be more intimate and share more emotions than males, whereas men relationships frequently involve shared interest. Men and women can be friends just as equally as compared to same sex friendships (Cavanaugh & Blanchard-Fields, 2011). However, there is a more likely hood that when opposite sexes become friends it usually entails sexual interest to the

Everyone has their own definition of what a friend is and what qualities they should obtain. To many individuals true friendship is represented by how long an individual has known someone and maintained to stay close with them through that time. However true friendship means more than just a timestamp or who lives down the block from one another. True friendship is a trait that is not found in every person met throughout a lifetime. It’s not always measured by the amount of time individuals have spent together but it’s more about the relationship created during the time spent with one another. To many individuals true friendship means having someone who respects them and supports them through every aspect of their life

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