The Impact of Virtual Friendship

I discovered an excellent article by Christine Rosen entitled "Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism." It is worth a read.

You can check it out here: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/virtual-friendship-and-the-new-narcissism

There is also an NPR interview of Rosen on the topic that I have yet to explore. I'm guessing it's probably very good.

Here are a few excerpts from the article:

"Does this technology, with its constant demands to collect (friends and status), and perform (by marketing ourselves), in some ways undermine our ability to attain what it promises—a surer sense of who we are and where we belong?"

"A new generation of social networking websites appeared in 2002 with the launch of Friendster, whose founder, Jonathan Abrams, admitted that his main motivation for creating the site was to meet attractive women."

"But “friendship” in these virtual spaces is thoroughly different from real-world friendship. In its traditional sense, friendship is a relationship which, broadly speaking, involves the sharing of mutual interests, reciprocity, trust, and the revelation of intimate details over time and within specific social (and cultural) contexts. Because friendship depends on mutual revelations that are concealed from the rest of the world, it can only flourish within the boundaries of privacy; the idea of public friendship is an oxymoron."

"There are opportunity costs when we spend so much time carefully grooming ourselves online. Given how much time we already devote to entertaining ourselves with technology, it is at least worth asking if the time we spend on social networking sites is well spent. In investing so much energy into improving how we present ourselves online, are we missing chances to genuinely improve ourselves?"

Now, before I make a hypocrite of myself for posting such an article in the first place, i'm going to head downtown to grab some tacos with some friends. :)