Facebook as a piece of technology is amazing. As a site that purports to be a social utility that connects you with the people around you, it does just that. It is the ability to fulfill this purpose well that, to me, makes Facebook bad for friendships.
Firstly, weak ties have a place in society. Mark Granovetter in his book “The Strength of Weak Ties” explains how weak ties help spread information to individuals that are not accessible via strong ties.
The problem to me is that while Facebook becomes an effective tool to manage those connections with people that are weak ties, it also creates the danger of making more ties weak.
Take for example birthday wishes. It used to be that the only way to wish a person ‘Happy Birthday’ was to be physically with a person. Then there was mail, so now cards could be sent. Then there was the telephone, so a call just needed to be made. Then there was email. Then there was sms. It became progressively easier to show ‘we care’ as long as we made the effort to remember. Now, even the effort to remember is not needed as Facebook does it for you. Someone left a comment on an earlier post that seemed to indicate that the lessening of effort needed somehow results in the decrease in sincerity. I’m not sure if this is always the case. The message may be of a medium that is easier to use but that does not always make the message less sincere although it can be argued that the medium used is the message.
Granted then that using a medium that takes little effort on your part to communicate with your friends may not always be indicative of a lack of sincerity, how would Facebook be bad for friendships?
Before I go further, I would like to assert that the use of the word ‘friend’ to describe everyone on your social network by sites like Facebook increasingly blurs the distinction between what is an acquaintance and friend to generations that grew up with the Internet. I would like then to make another assertion – that such a distinction is actually important for the proper functioning of society and we are all worse off with the lost of that distinction.
The reason why Facebook is bad for friendships is the use of apps like ‘SuperPoke!’ and ‘Gifts’. ‘SuperPoke!’ is an application that allows you to specify ‘actions to be taken against a friend’. ‘Gifts’ allows you to give a virtual present to a friend which will result in an image representing the gift appearing on the friend’s profile. These applications allow you to do something to show the friend that you are aware of that individual in your online social network if not your life as well as a reminder to that friend that you are still around (i.e. keeping yourself in view). It is as much about the giver as it is about the given.
The problem of the use of such applications is that friendship becomes mediated by a form of media. When I was in Primary School, my friends were classmates and people that I played with after school. We were friends because we were being friends. We did stuff that friends did together. We stood by each other. We encouraged each other when exams came up…
When Friendster popularized online social networks, friends became a collector’s item. Granted that there were always those sort of people who just had to or seemed to know everyone and kept count in that ‘blackbook’, collecting friends became something everyone engaged in naturally by the use of online social networks. While not everyone took it to the extreme like those who seem to max out the number of friends they can have on an account, online social networks brought the concept of ‘having friends’ to the foreground of our consciousness.
Now, with Facebook and similar applications, we have reached a stage where it isn’t just about ‘having friends’ but ‘appearing to be friends’ not just to ourselves but to others in the network. Such applications then work against us. They reduce what could have possibly grown to strong ties to weak ties because little effort is made beyond connecting over applications like Facebook – it is just that easy. The sadder thing would be if existing friendships become reduced because instead of making the effort to meet up and really talk and spend time together, we put that off because being able to connect over Facebook deceives us by making us feel that the existing state of the friendship is healthy and that amount of interaction is sufficient.
Of course, it would probably not be superfluous to point out that I’m using a Timex definition of friendship in a digital age.
Friendship is being redefined by how we use technology. The question then is this – is that a good thing?
Lizzy | 05-Jan-08 at 6:28 am | Permalink
Facebook is turning into a scary thing. It knows everything you do online, it let’s anybody see your name, profile, you information. If you included your work information and city, anyone can show up at your work. It’s a point where it it even included in crime stories on the news. It should be taken off the internet.
iantimothy | 05-Jan-08 at 10:03 am | Permalink
Hello. Actually, a lot of other services know a lot about you too. Gmail is one of them. Privacy is really an illusion.
liza belair | 06-Apr-08 at 12:46 pm | Permalink
it all depends on how you use facebook,like you have to be a member to even message people o review them ,its bad to date over facebook either way .dont be stupid and say where you live exalctly,granred thees people who lie about stuff you go to just have boundaries.
Bobby | 10-Apr-08 at 10:03 pm | Permalink
Screw Facebook!Long live YouTube!
Bobby | 10-Apr-08 at 10:09 pm | Permalink
Screw Youtube!Long live Facebook!
Screw Facebook | 31-May-08 at 1:41 am | Permalink
Screw Facebook! Long live Myspace/bebo/hi5/tagged/linkedin
Richard Fortune | 22-Jun-08 at 11:54 pm | Permalink
Couldn’t agree more with you on this. Funnily enough I posted a related entry in my blog recently. Its kind of dated at this point and is more of a personal take on why I think Facebook is Bad.
The Anti-Mother | 06-Oct-08 at 5:39 am | Permalink
Wow, this is a great article! Unfortunately it has to be about how society is being ruined by online communities, but it’s so true. I mean, just think about what people had to do before online tools (FB, AIM, etc)and even cell phones! They actually had to work at communication. Now it’s something we take for granted…
Gonga | 19-Oct-08 at 6:26 am | Permalink
Obviously Facebook is just a tool, and therefore it is not the tool that is a bad thing but the manner in which it is used. Unfortunately it seems many people are just to stupid to realise the damage they do to their connections by utilising the various applications on networking sites like facebook.
“Top friends” is a perfect example and one that many many people seem happy to use without thinking about a basic principle its built on. By choosing your “Top Friends” you are effectively telling your social circle how you rank them. There is a thought process that goes in to choosing each friend, and many, if not most people will start at the top and think about what person in their lives offers most and place them closest to the start.
I have no doubt that applications like “Top Friends” will have weakened friendships as people who considered themselves as slightly higher up their peers social heirarchy will feel a little let down to see that Dave, Gordon, Paul, Sarah, Jim, Adam, Claire and Hubert are all on the list before them.
Facebook is useful though, if not to see if your first love turned out to be a terrible waste of flesh as opposed to rekindling the same lost romance. I doubt this happens all to often, more it just results in drunken “poking” sessions and people lying in bed next to their real time partners wondering “what if” after receiving yet another facebook “poke” from someone in need of a cheap flirt.
iantimothy | 19-Oct-08 at 4:15 pm | Permalink
@Gonga – thanks for your comments. I do think that the explicit ranking of friends in such a public setting could possible be detrimental to relationships.
@The Anti-Mother – We now have more tools, but yet, I feel we communicate less effectively.
Mandy | 29-Nov-08 at 10:44 pm | Permalink
Facebook is NOT a dangerous place. It depends on the people who have facebook. There are many privacy settings on facebook, unlike myspace. For example, you could make sure no one can see your profile picture,information, profile, and can’t search for you unless they add you as a friend. Even college professors have a facebook because it is good for the students. So before you judge facebook consider reading about it..
may_julie | 16-Apr-09 at 6:29 pm | Permalink
As a university student, EVERYONE around me has a facebook, and the people that i speak to, wether on a regular basis, or on my shift at the bar, or on a drunken night out, are my “friends” on facebook. But close friends and friendly acquaintances alike realize the difference between the actual meaning of friend and what it means to be friends with someone on facebook. Your article was a pedantic discussion of the lending of the word friend to something new, that previously didn’t exist. In a world where new things and new ideas are being produced everyday, it is understandable that words will be reused and redefined. Having moved to a university in England, from Hawaii, and all of my close relatives being sprawled across the entire continental US, I am very grateful for the ease in communication that facebook and other modern advancements have allowed me. Before facebook and other social networking sites, I would speak to family members on important dates; their birthdays, my birthdays, and christmas, but with facebook, if they even cross my mind I can log on, search their name, and type a few sentences telling them that I care and was thinking about them. The structure of the website allows for much more casualty than a letter or even an email, and you don’t have to have a paragraph worth of new information in order to communicate. Friendships now are no less strong than they ever have been, and still consist of the people you connect with, the people who will stand by you, and the people you respect. Friendship has not been redefined, it simply makes distances shorter, and time zones mesh. Having written letters to friends when you were young doesn’t make you a better friend, and your disgust at the use of friend on facebook, doesn’t make you a loyal companion, all this means is that you are fighting against convenience the same way the luddites fought against the industrial revolution. And like the industrial revolution, the technological revolution will continue expanding and advancing with or without your consent. The best thing you can do to ensure the preservation of the decency you feel is slipping away is to honor your friends and make sure that you keep in contact with them in whatever way you deem moral, because though you don’t use facebook, a lot of the world does, and what was considered keeping in touch 10 years ago doesn’t cut it now, when you have every excuse to reach them; it’s reliable, it’s free, and it’s a click away.
Soranne(French kid) | 22-Apr-09 at 11:13 pm | Permalink
Very good article, I hope it will change people’s mind and that this web site will be taken off.
The Pop-Up City — July 5: International Defriending Day | 17-May-09 at 10:40 pm | Permalink
[...] even took the initiative for an international defriending day on July 5. ‘Defrienders’ argue that Facebook is bad for friendships, because it takes caring about your relatives to a too easy [...]