How We Make and Keep Friends
Do you have a lot of online friends? You’re not alone, as the Internet and social media replaces the bowling league and other organizations as the place to maintain social ties.
Much has been made of the impact of social media on marriages and romantic relationships, and several studies examine the concrete role electronic social communication plays in courtship and divorce. But the way technology shapes platonic relationships is somewhat overlooked, even though it plays an important role in how we relate to one another as friends.
Sure, social media has its origins in friendship and networking, but we’re just now starting to understand how technology is changing the face of making friends, especially as social services mature and the stigma of online friendship fades.
Hierarchies of Friendship
Examining friendship is difficult because it encompasses so many different types of relationships. Friendship is a loose, elastic category that contains anything from intensely bonded social companions, work pals you knock back a few drinks with after a hard day’s effort, acquaintances you chat with at your local coffee shop or activity partners that congregate around sports, hobbies or other special interests. The hierarchy of friendship is rich and varied, making it hard to pin down as a subject of study.
Just as technology changed the hierarchy of communication, it altered the hierarchy of friendships, drawing a line between real-life friends and online ones. And for awhile, the “online friend” — whether made through blogs, social media or other Web-enabled avenue — ranked at the bottom of the friendship hierarchy in terms of social acceptance. People who talked a lot about their “online friends” ended up being pitied or ridiculed for cultivating friendships through computers instead of handshakes and hugs. How could an Internet or social media-based connection possibly exceed one with origins in real life?
The Mainstreaming of Social Media
But attitudes and technology are changing, and more people can say they have at least one or more online friends now, thanks to the mainstreaming of social media and the complete saturation of the Internet in our lives. The number of people using social networking sites has nearly doubled since 2008, according to Pew, and users are now older than in the past.
Nearly four-in-five adults in the U.S. use the Internet, and almost half of them are on at least one social network. In addition, the average age of social media users has grown to 38, and most of them use Facebook, which by its very nature encourages interpersonal relationships through its system of status updates, commenting, “likes” and sharing.
Internet-based friendships nurtured through social media sit alongside real-life friendship in a new way. Sure, some people are trading real-life, one-on-one connections for status updates, LOLs and smiley faces, as social circles now expand to include Facebook friends lists and Twitter followers.
Still, that might not be all that bad. We know many people now say they have good friends they’ve met through the Internet, even though they’ve never met in person. Social media, e-mails, and special interest websites and blogs are complementing, not replacing, traditional friendships — alleviating isolation and creating connections that are more solid than their digitally detached nature would have you think.
Disintegrating Communities
For one thing, online and social media friendships are filling a vacuum in the U.S. noted by many sociologists: the disintegration of traditional American communities, in which people encounter others with similar values or interests, giving rise to new friendships and acquaintances. In the seminal book “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,” Harvard-based political scientist Robert D. Putnam examines the decline of bowling leagues, despite a marked increase in bowlers. He parlayed his study beyond bowling, noting a similar disintegration of in-person social interaction overall, with declining membership numbers in civil organizations, group leisure activities and social associations.
The result is a reduction of U.S. “social capital” that has ripple effects on how we relate to one another, as well more distant aftereffects on political participation and civic discussion, according to Putnam. In short, social ties are an essential glue helping to connect us with each other on a one-on-one basis, but also as a community and a country. Putnam argues that technologies like television and the Internet “individualize” our leisure time to such an extent that we are becoming socially isolated, making less friends and feeling less like a part of any community.
However, technologies like social media now may help these issues, especially since making friends in real life is increasingly squeezed out by work pressures and geographic isolation, and it gets harder to find places to make friends.
In school, the process of finding like-minded souls to spend time with is easy: you’re surrounded by people similar in age and lifestyle. But after student days are over, adults report it gets harder to make and maintain friendships, which leaves a perfect gap for the Internet to fill and changes the balance between how we value online and real-life friendships.
A Connection, Not a Substitution
Now, having online friends is almost a given. According to poll conducted online by Skout, a mobile social network for people 18 and older, fully one-third of Americans now say they’ve met a good friend through technology, and another one-fourth say they’ve got a good friend they’ve never met in person.
The Skout survey found that more Americans think social networks are more helpful in making new friends than sports, owning a dog or even having a baby, and more than one-third — especially people aged 18-34 — found it easier to make friends online than in person. This may point to a growing sea change in the face of friendship and community: we’re not making and cementing social ties in bowling alleys anymore. Online social media like Facebook allow us to strengthen the loose networks we develop in the course of our busy days, instead of becoming more isolated.
And technology has become a valuable tool in maintaining friendships in a busy, fast-paced age. The Skout survey revealed that almost three-quarters of all Americans now stay in contact with friends as equally in person as they do online, and more say they spend time with their friends through mobile apps, text or chatting than through social networking. The ability to contact others on-the-go makes contact and keeping up easier. The start of a life-long friendship could begin with a check-in at a local lunchspot that starts a meaningful conversation.
The Social Search Is Big Business
But what if you have all these connections and you’re talking online every day but you’d still like to have some friends you can reach out and physically touch? The reality is that many of us, especially those who are going through transitions, still want to actually meet friends we keep up with online, and social media can help this, too.
Entrepreneurs are stepping in to fill that void. For example, back in 2008 Janis Kupferer moved to Denver for a job, and she was 40, single, and lonely.
She told the New York Times how, when browsing Match.com, she would click on other women’s profiles and think “Some of these women sound really neat. Why isn’t there a Web site where I can meet female friends?”
So she formed her own website, SocialJane.com, which now has close to 20,000 members. It works a lot like a standard dating site, including posting a profile and connecting with other members. Instead of dating though, people who use SocialJane are looking for women with whom they have things in common, and many women have found kindred spirits through the site.
Usually, the sites charge a subscription fee, but their owners note that many people who join them are in a period of transition, having arrived in a new city or gone through a divorce or breakup, so they’re looking for friends and not having much luck. Again, technology is stepping in, filling a vacuum where real-life structures have failed.
And site owners note that while some people might be embarrassed to think they’re paying to meet friends — because the sites usually charge a subscription fee — they’re really no different than dating sites, which have become mainstream over the years.
“It’s okay, we’re busy, we’ve got a lot of stuff going on,” said Amanda Blain, the founder of Girlfriend Social. You’re not weird or strange.”
But Are These People Really Your Friends?
Some may still argue that friendships started and maintained primarily online are limited, and without the cues of body language, gestures and eye-to-eye contact, it can be difficult to be truly engaged with someone you’ve never met in person. And humans may always crave the contact that comes from in-person interaction.
And there is always the danger of believing amassing lots of friends online is a substitute for real community and relationships. Research shows that no matter how many Facebook friends or Twitter followers people have, the truth is they can only maintain strong relationships to approximately 150 of them, about the same number as in their offline lives.
However, it’s often easier to meet people online and quickly form relationships, even with people they’d never speak to in real life. These online friendships are as important to many people as their real-life friends, and studies show people who use Facebook to communicate are making real friends online and and aren’t lonely at all.
All the debate over the number of Facebook friends or Twitter followers may really obscure the big news that many of us are strengthening, expanding and maintaining our social connections with online tools, not using them to replace traditional relationships.
