Virtual Friendship A New Narcissism Analysis

Social Networking Has No Feeling

In “Virtual Friendship an New Narcissism”, Christine Rosen says, “Today’s online social networks are congeries of mostly weak ties.” With technology and the social network, relationships have become impersonal and cold resulting from a lack of feedback because there is little visual communication to understand each other. In today’s society there is little time to actually talk on the phone and have a deep conversation, instead there is short abbreviated words that can be misconstrued. Meeting and chatting face-to-face happens infrequently because texting and facebooking have taken the place of casual together time communicating. We live in a face paced world and texting and the social network fit our
schedule. Technology in today’s world has become an absolute must for communicating with friends, family and acquaintances. The social network has created an intricate web for people of all ages to talk endless hours together, socializing, chatting, sharing dreams and secrets. Social networking is a wonderful invention, it can help people find long lost relatives, find old classmates they lost contact with, create groups that have the same interests and the list could go on. Online social networks are tools that bring people together, enabling them to be able to increase and expand their friendship circle. On the other hand, social networks can be detrimental to growing deep and lasting relationships. In fact technology has made the world more distant, impersonal and cold. Instead of seeing an expression on someone’s face, a person only sees the words stream across a computer or cell phone screen, devoid of human feeling or touch. The reader then has to guess what the writer’s tone is. When reading the words on the screen, there is no emotion. Understanding the feeling of the words is like guesswork, it might be serious, but the reader mistaking thinks it’s funny. For instance, when I went out to dinner a couple of days ago with two of my friends on the tennis team, I was sitting in the chair talking to them about the teams upcoming match in Arizona. One of the girls (Kelly) decided to pull out her cell phone so she could go on facebook. Kelly was having a conversation on facebook chat with her best friend from back home. Her best friend told Kelly her dog of fifteen years of age passed away the day before. When Kelly told me about the situation, she didn’t seem sad at all. The words coming out of Kelly’s mouth did not have a sad tone or any tone for that matter. Kelly didn’t have a feeling about her best friend’s dog dying. The message from her friend was impersonal and with a message so tragic, one would think to have some kind of an emotional feeling. Since the news that came from her best friend through social networking, there wasn’t any emotional connection to the horrid news. Kelly had finished talking to her and ate her cheeseburger like nothing had happened, carrying on the conversation about the teams’ upcoming match. Having a conversation online, let alone trying to conduct a relationship can hurt the way we socialize on a daily bases.
People need to have the face-to-face time. Face to-face time gives the emotional and physical attention to fulfill our needs. The sad thing is that the people that mostly use social networks to maintain their relationships are allowing technology rule their lives. Some people haven’t written a letter in years, some never send greeting cards or thank-you’s through the mail, they only e-cards. We live in a fast pace society, you can send a text in a second, writing a letter takes time and postage. To buy a card one would have to take time and drive to the store and then to the post office. The social network and technology has made this generation become concerned with doing things quick as possible, no time to waste. We are the e-generation, on the move, no time to build relationships, unless it’s in a text of ten words or less,
LOL! A mere decade ago people actually talked to each other and engaged in face-to-face contact.
They would pick up the phone and talk for a while. They would meet for coffee and chat for endless hours, deepening their friendship ties. They would never dream of texting someone to say, “I don’t have time to meet you today, let’s just chat online ok?” Today in this social network age technology has dehumanized socialization.
In all honesty, our society has become addicted to facebook, texting on cell phones or twittering. It is a type of relationship they crave, one they can control, one that they have the power to start and end, yet they don’t realize that this social networking is detrimental to one’s health. One negative is when people are socializing online they tend to waste a lot of time; replies do not always come quick, to say the least. If a person is doing homework or studying for a test while facebooking, twittering or texting in between, one can become distracted and preoccupied with that messaging and meanwhile the thing that they are studying is not soaking in, thus they are not able to really retain what they are reading for
homework. The Social Network aids in helping the loners stay lonely, the agoraphobic stay away from human contact and the shy and introverted easily stay in their e-cave. All of this technology helps drive the nonsocial or the socially handicapped person further away from human contact. It is so sad because in away they are getting some kind of relationship from the social network, but it is lacking in what they really need to be fulfilled and that is the wonderful feeling that comes from the human voice and human touch. We need that to grow our relationships, to keep them strong to nurture them and make them bloom into something that will last a lifetime. The Social Network has positives, but I believe the negatives outweigh them. I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t text, email or facebook. I have come to depend on them just as I depend on my bike to get around campus, or my car to get from Davis to my home. I admit I need the Social Network for socialization and to feel important and connected, but I need to draw a line on how much I use it. Social Networking can be a powerful tool if used correctly, now can this generation do that? Time will tell.