The Internet

The internet has gone a long way in determining the sort of a friend its user would have and what a friend exactly means. Recently a court in U.S ruled that a face book friend could not be a “real” friend. So the concept of friend don the internet turns out to be a pretty vague one. However, the various social networks still continue to exercise their influence by encouraging the users to continue to add more people as friends. That long list may not include people who are your friends or people whom you do not even know. Through this the internet cheapens the meaning of friendship for you by shifting the user to focus more on the quantity of friends instead of better quality of communication with the friends.

In the context of social networking, it becomes very vague in defining what the definition of a friend really is. In today's world of hyper-connectivity that is driven by technology that has far and wide range of which we know no bounds, true friendship or friendship as we used to know is slowly fading away. Internet has changed the concept that is meant to define a friend. Our present notions and ideas about friends are being transformed by social networking sites such as Face book, Twitter, LinkedIn. They have failed to induce the meaningful existence among the friends that is so much desired by everyone.

The social media sites and the internet are advancing and influencing friendship directly or indirectly between the people on a completely new footing. As time goes by, the daily lives of people become more and more technologically connected resulting in the loss of friends. Other meaningful relationships are being lost as the electronic medium stimulates shallow friendships rather than friendship on true basis.

The quality of friendship that people maintain on social networks as compared to those that they make while meeting face-to-face is less frequent and intimate. Contacts on social networking sites cannot for most of the time generate the same intensity of relationship and understanding between the people as social contact does.

Aristotle once said that: "The desire for friendship comes quickly. Friendship does not." This explains why the quantity of friendship increases by large proportions on the internet but the quality does not. It requires a lot of time and labor including developing an intimacy with a person for the development of a strong relationship which is simply not possible on the internet.

The internet by making people feel more secure in contacting strangers through its deceptive shadows of cyberspace only allows for acquaintances to be developed. Strong friendship cannot result on this account.

The way people think and the language they use, especially the English language has evolved under the considerable influence of technology. This change in language has been more in the style that people use rather than any structural changes in the language itself. TV and radio had already exhibited tremendous influence in the early 20th century by introducing new ...