Social Networking and the End of True Friendship Essay

â€Å"A wealth of content creates a poverty of attention.† - Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon - Facebook now has over 1.3 billion monthly active users (Edwards, 2014). When we consider such a colossal volume of information being pumped continuously into cyberspace, social media’s pervasive stranglehold on our society becomes readily apparent. In the past decade we have opened more communication channels than our parents ever thought possible. The advent of smartphones has even eliminated the necessity of a computer screen, putting the power to network across the globe literally in the palms of our hands. We are able to see the positive impacts of the social media movement every day in the speed at which information is disseminated and the†¦show more content†¦While it might seem that our online social networks are allowing us to have more friends than ever before, it is more likely that we are reaching our full potential of recognizing one another. In fact, increasing the size of our social network appears to produce no proportional increase in our capacity for meaningful relationship. Instead we operate on a â€Å"one in, one out† psychological system where every new member of the 150 Club requires another to be jettisoned (Devlin). And so what of the â€Å"fluff people,† whose content we are exposed to every time we log in to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram? How are we affected by maintaining these casual, emotionally distant relationships over the Internet? The impacts may be worse than we would care to imagine. A recent study indicated 354 Facebook friends to be the average maximum number an individual can acquire before becoming less content with his or her own life (Watkins). Why? Because very rarely are our social media personas reflective of our real-life realities. Perhaps it is because we wish to spare others the pain and drama of our everyday lives; perhaps it is because we revel in the opportunity social media offers for self-promotion. Regardless, to a certain extent weShow MoreRelatedFacebook: The End of Friendship As We Know It Essay966 Words   |  4 PagesFacebook: Its The End of Friendship As We Know It (and I feel fine) Manjoo’s essay Is Facebook a Fad provides extensive insight into various social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Based on statistics derived from Manjoo’s essay, we get to know that Facebook has over one billion active users and one half of them log into their accounts each day (Manjoo p.223). William Deresiewicz also eludes to this in his essay Faux Friendship. As a result of so many people optingRead MoreHow Social Media Has On Our Society1010 Words   |  5 PagesIn â€Å"Faux Friendship,† associate professor William Deresiewics discusses the affect that social media has on our society. 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