Wednesday, June 14: Social Media Friendships

I enjoyed reading this article a lot because it explains a situation that I have been wondering about for a very long time. The article explains that we can maintain 150 social friendships. When I read this, I was very surprised because most of everyone that uses Facebook has well over 150 friends. It made me question, what does friendship mean? The author made it clear that he was referring to friendships as a non-sexual, non-family related companionship. This does not include people that we are friends with on Facebook because we aren't actually communicating regularly or even caring what these people have to say. So why do so many people post their personal information for people who aren't even their true friends going to see? I think as time has gone on and the internet has become a more popular place for people to hang out, we have lost the true connection to others that we used to have. By communicating with friends through social media and never actually talking to them outside of the internet, we lose a connection and bond with them because the interaction is less personal. I think the use of the internet has created a lot of fake friends for people because it is hard for us to separate the people who are interested in knowing what we are doing with our lives through Facebook versus people who actually care about what decisions we make throughout our lives. I wish we could experience time without the internet so we would be able to tell who we are actually friends with instead of being fake friends with people because we constantly see them on the internet.