Shubham Aggarwal
Eng 101
Professor Lorena
Date: 05/01/2014
The Impact of Social Media in our Lives
The article, “Is facebook a fad” by Farhad Manjoo serves as a good medium to
emphasize on the impact of social media in our lives. As a graduate of Cornell
University, and a columnist for the State on technology, Manjoo is well placed to
recognise the influence of Facebook and other social sites on their users. The article
speaks widely about the major social sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Relying on
the statistics given by the author in the article, over 600million users are active on
Facebook (Manjoo 223). Another writer in the same article who highlights the effects
of social media is William Deresiewicz, whose essay is entitled “Faux Friendship”.
He explains how half of the 600million Facebook users login to their Facebook
accounts every day. Social networking has had a serious impact on the way people
communicate in this transitional world of technology. The consequences of being
social through the internet is aligned towards the various concerns and issues
surrounding the social networking sites.
Due to the fact that a lot of people have opted for social media such as Facebook
and twitter, this has led to friendship being integrated into the numerous lifestyles that
are termed as electronic. People have become so busy sending messages that they
hardly have any time left for their real life friends. This is concrete evidence that
social sites pose an eminent threat to people’s ability to communicate face to face. For
instance, studies have confirmed that in America, people without any close confidants
have shot up from one person in every ten American in 1985, to one person in every
four people, thus proving that social networks are a threat to our way of
communication (Deresiewicz 478)
It is crucial to note that social networking sites have done a big deal in worsening
people’s ability to find real friends. In Deresiewiez’s argument, real friends should
have an actual connection. Social networking sites, on the other hand, have brought
about the end of the old fashioned face to face kind of friendship. Due to this reason,
people have gradually lost the closeness that was brought about by friendship. Thus
by using social networking sites, people are no longer close to each; instead, they
have developed a sense of connection that is very different from the actual
connection. This has resulted into the worsening of people’s ability to find real-life
friends. The article by Deresiewicz gives another major disadvantage of friendships
formed on social networking sites. He emphasizes that people tend to have so many
friends on social networking sites that they communicate with to a level that they are
not able to recognize who their real friends are. Due to this, people’s individual
friendships become blurred due to the fact that people spend a lot of time chatting
with people that are far away other concentrating on the real people around thus.
Deresiewicz gives a strong quote to support this argument by writing, “the more
people we get to know, the lonelier we get” (Deresiewicz 478). The consequence of
this is that people tend to live a miserable life with problems that they cannot speak
out to anyone due to the lack of close friends.
Our identity has been shaped by social media in such a way that people are
willing to conduct their personal lives in public. This is evident in a situation where
people in the social networking sites comment about their whereabouts and personal
feelings without taking into consideration the danger they put themselves into. The
writer uses the following phrase to show how ignorant people have become of their
private lives. “Hola cutie-pie! Am in town on Wednesday, lunch?” (Deresiewicz 478).
Anything that is written on Facebook can be seen by anyone especially for people that
have public profiles. Most people tend to comment about their personal lives not
keeping in mind that everyone is not as friendly as they may seem on social media.
“The value of friendship lies in the space of privacy it creates not on the number of
secrets two people share” (Deresiewicz 478). According to Deresiewicz, it is critical
to note that there are a lot of impersonators on the social networking platform, making
it a reality that people do not actually know the people they refer to as close friends on
the social networking sites. Social networking sites have redefined the concept of
friendship in such a way that it has led to the loss of significance of the good old
classical friendship, which used to available in scenario where one had a true friend
that could always be there till the end. Contrary to this, the social networking sites
have introduced a type of friendship that is different from the traditional friendship,
and offers a friendship that is non-judgmental and offering support and acceptance
that is unconditional. This means that social media tends to offer friendship that
fulfills its duty by taking our side through supporting every single decision that we
make. This kind of friendship also validates our feelings making people feel good
about them. This kind of friendship is completely unrealistic, since it is fun and free
of friction forgetting that true friends are supposed to advice and correct us when we
are wrong (Deresiewicz 474).
Friendship is described as ability to be close with a person and offer the required
support at all times and at the same time offers a correction and an advice when one is
wrong. Friendship should be hard won and precious like it was the case in the old
days. The writer describes true friendship as one that is of a higher calling and one
that demands qualities that are extraordinary in terms of character “ friendship should
be rooted in virtue always dedicated to the pursuit of truth and
goodness”(Deresiewicz 471). In today’s world, many people find it extremely hard to
practice all the above virtues of friendship due to the modern virtues of friendship that
have influenced our society, partly because of the current social networking sites.
This type of friendship believes in self expression and individualism, where
friendship is independent of the necessary bonds. Also, one is free to make a choice of
the friend one wants, hence portraying one’s image depending on the type of friends
one has (Deresiewicz 473). This has a consequence of giving rise to a society that is
selfish and uncontrolled in terms of behavior.
In conclusion, in today’s society, in the social media era, friends are more or less
a source of distraction. People do not want to face the reality hence end up having
fake friends who say what people want to hear. In today’s world, it is possible to have
everyone as a friend but at the same time be friends with nobody. This is the scenario
that is offered by the social media. It is important for people to go back to their roots
and to get the initial meaning of friendship in order to maintain a sane society.
Works Cited
Deresiewicz, William. "Faux Friendship." Social Networking Sites (2010): 470481.
Manjoo, Farhad. "Is Facebook a Fad." Social Networking Sites (2010): 222-226.