“Life without hundreds of online ‘friends’ is virtual death.”

Virtual friendship has become a trending topic since the rise of social media. Is having someone as a friend on Facebook the same thing as calling them a friend in real life? Christine Rosen talks about this in an article from the New Atlantis, a journal of technology and society.

We live in a world where not having Facebook is a social handicap. “ We create them to find friendship, love, and that ambiguous modern thing called connection. Like painters constantly retouching their work, we alter, update, and tweak our online self-portraits; but as digital objects they are far more ephemeral than oil on canvas.” This form of communication helps us keep in touch with others, as well as find new friends that we might have not found without a social network. However, online friendship removes the physical aspect of social interaction. You can’t be 100% certain that the writing to you is who they say they are. Online interactions remove the feeling behind words. On the Facebook, feelings are replaced with insignificant text and genuine laughter is replaced with “lol.” “Real intimacy requires risk — the risk of disapproval, of heartache, of being thought a fool.” Text is not able to explain your emotions like a conversation with another human being.