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Ajisa Akada
English 102
Essay
10 April 2015
Weaving Friendship Online
A little more than a decade ago when the Internet was not widely used and cell phones
were not as fully developed as they are now, the main way of staying in touch with others was
the exchange of letters. Letters took a few days to reach recipients; if the letters were to friends
in foreign countries or far places, often much time would pass before recipients received them.
However, letter exchange was a way for people to stay in touch keeping friendships alive
despite separation due to long distances. With the creation and popularization of social networks,
new forms of beginning and maintaining friendships have been introduced. Each person can
connect with other people easily, sharing his or her personal experiences while broadening his or
her viewpoints through varied interaction. Friendships make life happier, so the ability to stay
close with old friends, regardless of distance, and gain new friends around the world via social
media is advantageous. Social networks can assist lifelong friendships; however, people who rely
on Internet relationships must keep up with the changes of the times and the growth of
technology. Online friendship cannot take the place of all face-to-face communication and
intimacy, and perhaps some of the relationships which take place solely online may look shallow
when compared to relationships that have a physical component. Therefore, while social
networks offer users the means to establish and maintain deep personal relationships, sharing
meaningful content remains the responsibility of users.
Social networks revolutionized the ease of communication among friends, and as a result,
more and more networks are being developed which attract users for longer amounts of time.
Social networks connect people beyond countries borders, time differences, and connect each
friend instantaneously. Social networking sites began in 1997 with SixDegrees.com which

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allowed each user to build a personal page and connection with friends online; SixDegrees was
followed by Friendster in 2002, MySpace in 2003, and Facebook in 2004. Use of other social
networks like Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Google+ is now also spreading over the world
(Social Networking). Once users decide which platform or social network or networks suit their
needs, they can create the individualized content that best addresses what they want to convey to
other users. Millions to billions of people use social networks as a bridge to connect with friends
24 hours a day, and for young people especially, connecting to a social network is part of daily
life. Facebook, the biggest social networking site, had 1.2 billion users as of February 10, 2014
(Social study); Twitter, the second largest site, had 607.7 million users as of September 28,
2012, and Pinterest, the third largest site, had 23 million users as of July 2012 (Social
Networking). Users are also spending many hours on these sites: 70 percent of Facebook users
visit the site once a day and 45 percent visit multiple times daily. Forty-nine percent of Instagram
users visit at least once a day, and 36 percent of Twitter users visit at least once daily (qtd. in
Duggan, et al.). The number of users and the time spent on networking sites continue to increase
because of the way these sites help connect people effortlessly.
Not only can people connect with their friends instantaneously, they can use social
networks as places to share their own pictures, videos, favorite songs, stories, links, and
whatever they want to share with friends. For example, Jane 43, who lives in the US apart from
her friends, appreciates the development and growth of social networking sites. When she first
came to the US, she used to write letters to her friends to tell them how she was doing; she could
not know whether her letters arrived or not until she got replies from her friends. Now, to let her
friends know what is going on in her life, she no longer needs to write letters or long emails that
have four or five paragraphs describing her activities. She does not need to print the pictures she
wants her friends to see and send them respectively. Instead, with a few pictures, she can update

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her status on her social network site and type Im doing great. How are you, guys? She can talk
in public, and her friends can see her status on her social network page, and vice versa. She still
misses her friends even if she uses social networks, but these connections help her to feel closer
to her friends. According to research, when sharing daily events via social media, 52 percent of
users report social networks help their relationships with friends, and 88 percent say social
networking sites are useful to stay in touch with friends who they do not see regularly (Social
Networking). Social network users do not always need to react after skimming friends status
updates, so the connection is more casual, but each user can see how the others life is going.
Friends cannot always stay together as they get older; however, sharing new experiences with
distant friends online offers a sense of sharing time together.
Social networks also increase happiness due to the ability to maintain old friends and
create new friendships. Until yesterday, person A and person B were strangers, but they could be
friends the next day by joining online groups or by meeting as a friend of a friend on networks
like Facebook. People not only build new friendships; each social network user can reengage
him or herself with old friends who they had not contacted for a long time. According to an
article by Gretchen Rubin, Friends for keeps: staying connected to your past can make you
happier here and now, staying connected to old friends directly relates to current happiness.
Happiness sets off a chain reaction A great way to boost happiness in the present is to
remember happy times from the past (Rubin). When having a bad day, seeing friends share
delightful occasions via pictures on a social network site, may make a person feel better due to
synergetic effects. Although harmful posts infest and sometimes negatively affect users on social
sites, Psychologist Jeremy Dean says the sharing of positive emotions spreads much wider than
that of negative, and he offers an example of a single positive post [that] led to 1.75 more
positive posts by the Facebook users (Dean). Belonging gives people a sense of involvement

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and identity. Belonging helps people express who they are by the choices they make in the posts
they share, such as when they hit Like, or comment on what content makes them unhappy.
Moreover, connecting with others makes people less stressed which can lead to less mental
illness and faster recovery from trauma and illness (NOVA). Eventually, the consequences of
belonging are cheerful lives. Sharing raises not only sympathy but also vitality. Of course, people
may experience the exact opposite, like in instances of online bullying which need to be firmly
addressed when children and young adults are targeted. However, each adult user has the power
to engage or disengage when on social network sites; the impact of annoying materials that affect
individuals can be lessened by choice and a click.
Not all social network users have a positive experience. According to a report by the Pew
Research Center, 15 percent of adult social network users had an experience on a social
networking site that caused a friendship to end, 12% of adult users had an experience online that
resulted in a face-to-face argument, and 3% of adults reported a physical confrontation as the
result of an experience on a social networking site (Dugan, et al.). Through a lack of face-toface communication, misunderstanding or unintentional/ intentional attacks can occur easily and
the workload to solve a problem can become double, triple, or more when communication is
online versus face-to-face. To keep social networking sites welcoming to each user, good
manners and taking responsibility for what one says or posts are necessary. Another criticism of
friendships made or maintained on social networks concerns the depth of or authenticity of
Internet friendships. However, the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project
found that interacting with friends on social networks often leads users to face-to-face
interactions (Dugan, et al.). Online connections with friends can and often do extend beyond the
frame of a device screen. Furthermore, the depth or shallowness of friendships is not determined
by the social network site; the substance of Internet friendships strongly depends on how people

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use the social networks to create and share content. Therefore, even if the connection with
friends on social networks looks superficial, this does not always mean the friendships lacks
depth of feeling. Even thin thread offers a certain degree of connection. Staying close online has
become common, which could hardly have been imagined a decade ago when moving away
from a friend may have meant the end of a connection. Now, people derive benefit from social
networks, as tools to help users build and keep friendships strong.
Online friendships may be shallower to a certain degree compared to friendships that
include face-to-face communication; however, friendships through social media have advantages
such as allowing instant connection between friends, offering the feeling of shared lives, and
increasing the well-being of individuals by involvement. Communication via social networking
sites unfortunately has a downside; users can misrepresent themselves or be unkind. However,
imagine if people lost all social networking sites. Many of them would not know what the friends
they cannot see are experiencing or feeling. On that point, social networks fill in blanks to some
degree, often a large degree. If it were not for social media, friendships may lessen or become
lost altogether. Smart users, taking advantage of social networking sites and maintaining
friendships, should pay extra attention to the content they supply and the comments they make if
their goal is to extend themselves as friends and strengthen their friendships on social networking
sites.

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Works Cited
Dean, Jeremy. Happiness is Contagious and Powerful on Social Media. PSY Blog Understand
Your Mind. Spring.org. Web. 23 Mar. 2015.
Duggan, Maeve, and Aaron Smith. Social Media Update 2013. Pew Research Institute internet,
science & tech. 30 Des. 2013. Web. 5 Mar. 2015
Duggan, Maeve, et al. Social Media Update 2014. Pew Research Center
9 Jan. 2015. 13 Mar. 2015.
Goel, Vindu. "Adults' Use of Social Media Still on Rise, Study Says." New York Times 9 Jan.
2015: B2(L). Academic OneFile. Web. 7 Mar. 2015.
NOVA/WGBH Science Unit. Connection & Happiness. This Emotional Life. PBS Online.
Web. 23 Mar. 2015.
Social Networking Pros and Cons. ProCon.org. 23 Sep. 2014. Web. 5 Mar. 2015.
"Social study." Automotive News 10 Feb. 2014: 0024. Academic OneFile. Web. 7 Mar. 2015.