Is Facebook eroding the meaning of friendship?

Here begins a rather long rant about Facebook and the impact of social networking sites on the meaning of friendship.

The other day I was going through deleting people from my friend list who I haven’t spoken to in years and have no intention of speaking too. We all have Facebook friends from our school days or friends of friends that we once met at a party or worse, old friends of friends who you can’t remember where you met. They’re not friends. If it wasn’t for Facebook I would never see them again. Facebook, however, says they are friends and they can see what I’m up to, look at my photos and if they wanted, chat to me on Facebook chat (that would be awkward).

So if our Facebook accounts are full of people who aren’t really friends I wonder how this social network is affecting our understanding of friendship. Is it devaluing the whole concept of friendship, diluting what we believe and expect friends should be like? If so this is worrying as its use is so widespread, almost everyone in society uses Facebook. Anyone with access to a computer is tempted to link up with their ‘friends’ via Facebook. When my dad first tried it he asked me, “why are all of these people adding me?” He thought much of what people were writing as statuses was silly.

What’s a tad sad about this is that real and close friends are lumped in with all these other pretenders. They are just a few among hundreds of people. The news feeds can become full of junk from people we don’t even like that much. When I now hide people from my news feed I find myself wondering why we’re ‘friends’ at all.

But starting a new “close friends only” social network wouldn’t work either. Because at the heart of Facebook is a problem, and that problem is essentially a lack of face to face interaction. It is far easier to interact online in a non-committal way than sit down with a friend and talk about what really matters. Nothing can compare with a face to face meeting over a drink or a meal shared with close friends.

I think if we don’t stop using Facebook as a middleman - a system for communication, via which we have friends and interact with them - we will begin to forget what in-depth and real friendships are. However, the reason why Facebook thrives is a perceived lack of time; everyone is too busy to meet up with multiple people one on one. While some of us may have stressful jobs and no time to see friends socially, the majority of us can make time. So it appears as if I’m letting Facebook off the hook here and blaming a new busy culture…not so fast Facebook. I think it is responsible for letting us assume online friendships are the same as real, physical friendships. It keeps us hooked with all its handy functions, apps and ease of use. It’s so popular that people that don’t use it feel left out, as if they’re missing something really important and fun. They’re not. It can be fun but there are days when you think, “I’m bored of refreshing this news feeds”, or “how did I get to looking at this random person’s photos?” You realise you are just wasting time. I think if we’re honest, many would say they are addicted to Facebook and use it as a source for self-worth and attention (problems in themselves which need addressing).

Don’t get me wrong, Facebook isn’t all bad. But we should be aware that it can affect our understanding of friendship (perhaps only in a subtle manner), how much time we spend face to face with friends, and essentially, does not compensate for simply hanging out with good friends.  

While there is plenty of research into social network sites (see here), I am yet to find a study  into the effect they have on our understanding of friendship itself (after an albeit brief browse of Google). I would guess this is either little effect, or negative. This New York Times article looks at the effects of social networking on our health, particularly the brain. There is a lot on the web referring to the negative aspects of communicating via these websites which we don’t consider when logging on. The obvious ones concern breaches of security and lack of privacy and ownership. Here’s a great article which highlights and explains some of these rather worrying issues. Perhaps we should be more careful when using them, remembering to take online threats seriously and online friendships less so.

So, if you spend far too much time using Facebook put down the laptop, pick up the phone, and arrange to meet that friend you haven’t seen in ages. Or go outside and take a walk.

Just don’t waste hours on friends who aren’t friends.