How Friendship Is Changing Due to the Internet – Social Friends
Internet Friendship – We currently live in an era of nonstop communication.
As long as our friends are active on social media, we can keep in touch with them no matter where they are in the globe or how long it has been since we last saw them.
However, can social media make friendships deeper or weaker?
Anthropologist Robin Dunbar claims that, depending on how sociable you are, you may have meaningful relationships with between 100 and 200 individuals at once.
Additionally, many of us have a far larger number of social media relationships.
William Rawlins, a relationship expert, categorizes friendships into three groups: active, dormant, and commemorative.
A friendship is considered to be active if you communicate with the other person frequently, feel comfortable asking them for emotional assistance, and generally know what’s going on in their lives.
Someone with whom you have a history but who you haven’t communicated in a long is referred to as a dormant friend.
However, you would approach them without hesitation if you lived nearby and it wouldn’t be strange.
Then, a commemorative friend is someone who was significant to you in a previous stage of your life but you don’t actually anticipate to run across or communicate with them again—possibly ever.
Although you have good memories of them, they are still clearly in the past.
Or they would have had social media not existed.
Facebook functions as a kind of trophy case for these special friendships.
You may read your old camp buddy’s political opinions or get a “Happy Birthday” letter from a former Little League teammate.
Your active friendships will gradually become inactive or commemorative as you become older.
That is due to the normal fading of friendships as individuals age.
Young individuals between the ages of 15 and 19 spend the most time socializing each day, while older folks have less time to spend with their friends, according to the American Time Use Survey.
According to one study, people were more prepared to part with possessions the more frequently they moved, but they also said they were more inclined to break social ties as well.
Which implies that those who travel around a lot could consider their friendships to be more transient.
A friendship is different from the rumpled soccer team hoodie you eventually threw out after your third relocation, though.
With little effort, technology gives us a method to prolong these connections, even those that are far distance.
However, some of those relationships aren’t actually active. They appear to be on life support more often. According to relationship expert Emily Langan, maintaining a friendship requires only the barest minimum of interaction. Therefore, posting messages on someone’s Facebook page or leaving comments on their Instagram posts is a means of maintaining a connection.
You can keep more connections alive thanks to social media, but they are shallower.
But it’s also a tool that might help you strengthen your connections if you only concentrate on your closest pals.
Friendships are stronger when they connect on many platforms in addition to in-person interactions.
This hypothesis is known as the media multiplexity theory.
Social networking may therefore help you maintain some of your important relationships as well as make others stronger.
Unlike with our family members or love partners, friendships are a very flexible type of interaction since there are no specific expectations or commitments.
This makes it simple to drop when things become hectic, but it also means that just because a friendship goes dormant for a while, it isn’t over.
Many middle-aged Americans Rawlins spoke with believed they were still friends with people they hadn’t spoken to in a very long time, according to a series of interviews he conducted with them.
But they had the impression that they might resume where they had left off.
Perhaps the greatest gift the Internet can provide us is that.
When we’re ready to continue where we left off, this is where we can locate our buddies.
Your pals are waiting for you to reconnect when you’re ready, but you have to put in the effort; simply like a status won’t cut it.
This episode of the new series “You Are Here” explores the science of daily living.
In the comments, let us know what subjects you’d like us to cover. Many thanks for watching; I’m Julie Beck.
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