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Why the Digital Age Is Not Destroying Friendship
The more media we use to maintain a relationship, the stronger that bond will likely be
Has the overuse of the word “friend” devalued the relationships it describes? In a connected world, how valuable are our online relationships? Are we, in fact, disconnected from one another? Must we visit someone at home to call that person a true friend?
As a society, we are pondering the effects — psychological and physiological — of the digital age on relationships and on our psychological health. But we have reason for optimism about the relationship between digital technology and friendship. Many clickbait headlines (“Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”) and the (often only slightly) more sober scientific reports that give rise to those headlines are not actually about relationships. They grapple broadly with the effect of technology and social media on “well-being.” Furthermore, the results to date have been so mixed they amount to a scientific version of he said, she said. For every study that finds a rise in loneliness, there is another showing an increase in connection.
The first — and still only — major survey to explicitly examine the intersection of people’s social media use and their relationships both online and off-line was conducted for the Pew…
