Friendship Essay 18u60

Akada 1 Ajisa Akada English 102 Essay 10 April 2015 Weaving Friendship Online A little more than a decade ago when the Internet was not widely used and cell phones were not as fully developed as they are now, the main way of staying in touch with others was the exchange of letters. Letters took a few days to reach recipients; if the letters were to friends in foreign countries or far places, often much time would before recipients received them. However, letter exchange was a way for people to stay in touch – keeping friendships alive despite separation due to long distances. With the creation and popularization of social networks, new forms of beginning and maintaining friendships have been introduced. Each person can connect with other people easily, sharing his or her personal experiences while broadening his or her viewpoints through varied interaction. Friendships make life happier, so the ability to stay close with old friends, regardless of distance, and gain new friends around the world via social media is advantageous. Social networks can assist lifelong friendships; however, people who rely on Internet relationships must keep up with the changes of the times and the growth of technology. Online friendship cannot take the place of all face-to-face communication and intimacy, and perhaps some of the relationships which take place solely online may look shallow when compared to relationships that have a physical component. Therefore, while social networks offer s the means to establish and maintain deep personal relationships, sharing meaningful content remains the responsibility of s. Social networks revolutionized the ease of communication among friends, and as a result, more and more networks are being developed which attract s for longer amounts of time. Social networks connect people beyond countries’ borders, time differences, and connect each friend instantaneously. Social networking sites began in 1997 with SixDegrees.com which

Akada 2 allowed each to build a personal page and connection with friends online; SixDegrees was followed by Friendster in 2002, MySpace in 2003, and Facebook in 2004. Use of other social networks like Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Google+ is now also spreading over the world (Social Networking). Once s decide which platform or social network or networks suit their needs, they can create the individualized content that best addresses what they want to convey to other s. Millions to billions of people use social networks as a bridge to connect with friends 24 hours a day, and for young people especially, connecting to a social network is part of daily life. Facebook, the biggest social networking site, had 1.2 billion s as of February 10, 2014 (“Social study”); Twitter, the second largest site, had 607.7 million s as of September 28, 2012, and Pinterest, the third largest site, had 23 million s as of July 2012 (Social Networking). s are also spending many hours on these sites: 70 percent of Facebook s visit the site once a day and 45 percent visit multiple times daily. Forty-nine percent of Instagram s visit at least once a day, and 36 percent of Twitter s visit at least once daily (qtd. in Duggan, et al.). The number of s and the time spent on networking sites continue to increase because of the way these sites help connect people effortlessly. Not only can people connect with their friends instantaneously, they can use social networks as places to share their own pictures, videos, favorite songs, stories, links, and whatever they want to share with friends. For example, Jane 43, who lives in the US apart from her friends, appreciates the development and growth of social networking sites. When she first came to the US, she used to write letters to her friends to tell them how she was doing; she could not know whether her letters arrived or not until she got replies from her friends. Now, to let her friends know what is going on in her life, she no longer needs to write letters or long emails that have four or five paragraphs describing her activities. She does not need to print the pictures she wants her friends to see and send them respectively. Instead, with a few pictures, she can update

Akada 3 her status on her social network site and type “I’m doing great. How are you, guys?” She can talk in public, and her friends can see her status on her social network page, and vice versa. She still misses her friends even if she uses social networks, but these connections help her to feel closer to her friends. According to research, when sharing daily events via social media, 52 percent of s report social networks help their relationships with friends, and 88 percent say social networking sites are useful to stay in touch with friends who they do not see regularly (Social Networking). Social network s do not always need to react after skimming friends’ status updates, so the connection is more casual, but each can see how the other’s life is going. Friends cannot always stay together as they get older; however, sharing new experiences with distant friends online offers a sense of sharing time together. Social networks also increase happiness due to the ability to maintain old friends and create new friendships. Until yesterday, person A and person B were strangers, but they could be friends the next day by ing online groups or by meeting as a friend of a friend on networks like Facebook. People not only build new friendships; each social network can reengage him or herself with old friends who they had not ed for a long time. According to an article by Gretchen Rubin, “Friends for keeps: staying connected to your past can make you happier here and now,” staying connected to old friends directly relates to current happiness. Happiness sets off a chain reaction –“A great way to boost happiness in the present is to happy times from the past” (Rubin). When having a bad day, seeing friends share delightful occasions via pictures on a social network site, may make a person feel better due to synergetic effects. Although harmful posts infest and sometimes negatively affect s on social sites, Psychologist Jeremy Dean says the sharing of positive emotions spreads much wider than that of negative, and he offers an example of a single “positive post [that] led to 1.75 more positive posts by the Facebook s” (Dean). Belonging gives people a sense of involvement

Akada 4 and identity. Belonging helps people express who they are by the choices they make in the posts they share, such as when they hit Like, or comment on what content makes them unhappy. Moreover, connecting with others makes people less stressed which can lead to less mental illness and “faster recovery from trauma and illness” (NOVA). Eventually, the consequences of belonging are cheerful lives. Sharing raises not only sympathy but also vitality. Of course, people may experience the exact opposite, like in instances of online bullying which need to be firmly addressed when children and young adults are targeted. However, each adult has the power to engage or disengage when on social network sites; the impact of annoying materials that affect individuals can be lessened by choice and a click. Not all social network s have a positive experience. According to a report by the Pew Research Center, “15 percent of adult social network s had an experience on a social networking site that caused a friendship to end, 12% of adult s had an experience online that resulted in a face-to-face argument, and 3% of adults reported a physical confrontation as the result of an experience on a social networking site” (Dugan, et al.). Through a lack of face-toface communication, misunderstanding or unintentional/ intentional attacks can occur easily and the workload to solve a problem can become double, triple, or more when communication is online versus face-to-face. To keep social networking sites welcoming to each , good manners and taking responsibility for what one says or posts are necessary. Another criticism of friendships made or maintained on social networks concerns the depth of or authenticity of Internet friendships. However, the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project found that interacting with friends on social networks often leads s to face-to-face interactions (Dugan, et al.). Online connections with friends can and often do extend beyond the frame of a device screen. Furthermore, the depth or shallowness of friendships is not determined by the social network site; the substance of Internet friendships strongly depends on how people

Akada 5 use the social networks to create and share content. Therefore, even if the connection with friends on social networks looks superficial, this does not always mean the friendships lacks depth of feeling. Even thin thread offers a certain degree of connection. Staying close online has become common, which could hardly have been imagined a decade ago when moving away from a friend may have meant the end of a connection. Now, people derive benefit from social networks, as tools to help s build and keep friendships strong. Online friendships may be shallower to a certain degree compared to friendships that include face-to-face communication; however, friendships through social media have advantages such as allowing instant connection between friends, offering the feeling of shared lives, and increasing the well-being of individuals by involvement. Communication via social networking sites unfortunately has a downside; s can misrepresent themselves or be unkind. However, imagine if people lost all social networking sites. Many of them would not know what the friends they cannot see are experiencing or feeling. On that point, social networks fill in blanks to some degree, often a large degree. If it were not for social media, friendships may lessen or become lost altogether. Smart s, taking advantage of social networking sites and maintaining friendships, should pay extra attention to the content they supply and the comments they make if their goal is to extend themselves as friends and strengthen their friendships on social networking sites.

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Works Cited Dean, Jeremy. “Happiness is Contagious and Powerful on Social Media.” PSY Blog Understand Your Mind. Spring.org. Web. 23 Mar. 2015. Duggan, Maeve, and Aaron Smith. Social Media Update 2013. Pew Research Institute internet, science & tech. 30 Des. 2013. Web. 5 Mar. 2015 Duggan, Maeve, et al. “Social Media Update 2014.” Pew Research Center 9 Jan. 2015. 13 Mar. 2015. Goel, Vindu. "Adults' Use of Social Media Still on Rise, Study Says." New York Times 9 Jan. 2015: B2(L). Academic OneFile. Web. 7 Mar. 2015. NOVA/WGBH Science Unit. “Connection & Happiness.” This Emotional Life. PBS Online. Web. 23 Mar. 2015. Social Networking Pros and Cons. ProCon.org. 23 Sep. 2014. Web. 5 Mar. 2015. "Social study." Automotive News 10 Feb. 2014: 0024. Academic OneFile. Web. 7 Mar. 2015.