Is It Possible to Make Friends with a Screen?

Is it possible to make friends with a screen? Over the years social media has not only polluted our internet use but also our lives, with more and more people interacting on a daily basis via email, text, facebook, twitter, and the list goes on. But are these interactions and will they ever be “friendships”? To call someone we have never seen or can even prove to exist is a far stretch, But yet we see all around us people disconnection from the conscious world and enter a state of isolation with the only exception being their phone. Can these connections through social media go as far as taking us away from physical interactions?

Social media has become a center of communication and for some the only form of it. As stated in the blog post "social media, pretend friends, and the lie of false intimacy" the author argues that we have compromised direct intercommunication for the deception of social media. Before this technology revolution that has impacted almost each and every one of our lives, we used to call, consistently email, or as insane as it sounds in this day and age have actual human contact, But now that has all been taken over by a simple text or tweet. We have convinced ourselves that by having more facebook friends, followers, likes, retweets, etc. That we are making meaningful and substantial engagements, but the reality is that we are enclosing ourselves in this digital bubble where a friend icon on a screen means more than a significant, intimate, relationship. The more we advance in this analogous form of communication, the more we drift away from our human and cultural norms.

A 2011 study survey that interviewed 2,255 people reasons that social networks have made people more social. They claim that avid online users on average have more social ties than non-online users. While this could be true due to the fact that social media for some helps build and improve social skills to then be used in real life interactions, it does not prove that social networks are a suitable platform to make worthwhile friendships. While social media is a good way to make more connections, have long distance communication, and is beneficial for work/school, it should be used as an add-on to supplement our communication