In my post Antisocial Networking I mentioned that I was getting a ton of invitations to social networking sites and joked that “before long we will all be one big writhing mass of social networkers,
spending countless hours doing whatever people do on these sites” due to peer pressure.
My post implied in a light hearted way that technology was changing the definition of “friend.” Since then, some have come out and said in a more serious way that technology really is changing the nature of friendships.
In MediaPost Online Spin, Max Kalehoff had an interesting take on the subject in his article Please, No More Friends. He wrote: “We’re experiencing friends overload, and it’s a tragedy of the commons.
The practice of friending has morphed way beyond the term’s original
intention and utility. And that is why I declare friends – at least in
the social-networking context – passé…
Let me be clear: Social networks are very much alive and well, but our
traditional, generalized notion of friend is dead. When online
friendships begin to scale artificially – such as randomly or via the
all-too-easy click of a button – they run the risk of overwhelming us,
causing the aggregate value of deeper social-network friendships to
erode.”
A little depressing (and overblown, in my opinion) but perhaps he is onto something.
Social networking friendship creep (a trend, not a person you want to avoid) is a more visible example of technology’s potential for altering how we relate to each other, and who we call friends.
The NY Times described how cell phone “friend and family” calling plans are doing much the same, in Saturday’s article What’s Good for Business Can be Hard on Friends:
“A month ago, Brandy McDowell sat down with her longtime friend, Kezia
Chandler, and told her she had switched cellphone carriers. Their
relationship has not been the same since. Now, they barely speak…
Maybe they should blame the cellphone carriers. The
carriers, after all, set up plans that encourage subscribers to talk
mainly to people in the same network. The companies say they are simply
trying to recruit and retain customers. It’s not surprising to find this out, considering the amount of competition there is in the industry these days. You can see that from these interesting cell phone statistics here.
But what was set up as
a purely business strategy is having an unintentional social effect. It
is dividing the people who share informal bonds and bringing together
those who have formal networks of cellphone ‘friends.'”
