Like Penpals: How Technology Changed Our Friendship
Technology is pretty much shaping the way our communication with each other: they changed both the nature and the form of communication. For some fifteen years, the tradition of long personal letters (and later emails) is a thing of the past - now we are corresponding in chat rooms, and instead of calls we throw voice messages. On the one hand, it made us much closer: you can communicate with a friend who has moved to another country at any time - and you do not have to spend huge amounts of money on long-distance communication. On the other hand, social networks can create a sense of false intimacy: it seems to us that we know everything that happens in a loved one's life, because we regularly see photos on the instagram and read posts, but this does not guarantee quality and "deep" communication.
The first thing that strikes you when we talk about the impact of technology on communication is its volume. It seems that those with whom we actively communicate (and, in principle, contacts), it became more: to talk, just dial a couple of sentences in the messenger, and not allocate time for the call - and on posts on Facebook or instagram can answer those we outside of the Internet we do not see at all. Moreover, the Internet is gradually becoming the main channel of communication, regardless of how strong the friendship is: according to a Pew Research Center study conducted among teenagers aged thirteen or seventeen, for most text messages are one of the main ways to talk with friends, about 88% The respondents correspond with them at least from time to time, 55% do it daily.
But does this mean that we have more friends? British anthropologist Robin Dunbar studied why primates pay so much attention to the care and care of each other. In the process, he decided to test another hypothesis, explaining the great brain of primates to the fact that they have many social connections and they actively build relationships with other individuals. Dunbar traced the relationship between brain size, the size of the groups in which primates stumble, and how much time they spend on caring for each other. It turned out that, knowing the size of the different brain parts of the animal, you can estimate the size of their flocks - and the researcher decided to try this theory on a person.
So the "Dunbar number" appeared: the scientist came to the conclusion that, on the basis of the average size of a human brain, on average (exactly on average) one hundred fifty people would be in his circle of contacts. Naturally, we are talking about people with whom we are connected by a little deeper acquaintance - we know not only their names and how they look. Like any "magic number", the Dunbar numbers are a generalization: how many people you know will depend on a variety of factors, including sociability and desires.
So far, studies have noted that a considerable number of friends in social networks does not mean that there are indeed more close relationships
Dunbar determined the average number for other social groups in which we are members. For example, fifty is the approximate number of people we can call buddies, that is, those we can meet after work over a cup of coffee or at a party. Fifteen is the average number of our friends, that is, those with whom we are close enough to share feelings and experiences. Finally, five is the middle circle of our closest people, which includes best friends, partners, and family members, dear to us. At the same time, what kind of people enter this or that circle may change over time: those who have recently been our closest friends can join the circle of acquaintances, and vice versa.
Dunbar notes that the number one hundred and fifty remained stable throughout different historical periods and coincides, for example, with the average population in the 18th century British villages. But does it work in the era of social networks, when many people have much more contacts in the list of friends? So far, researchers have noted that a significant number of friends in social networks does not mean that there are more close relationships. For example, one of the works showed that although the respondents had an average of three hundred friends, only seventy-five of them were considered close. True, the study was published in 2011 - since then, social networks have changed and spread much more.
In addition to the number of friends, there is also the question of the "quality" of relationships - how close are we actually to those with whom we speak on the Internet? Robin Dunbar himself believes that one correspondence is not enough for a strong friendship. “Yes, I can find out what you ate for breakfast from tweet, but are we getting any closer from this?” He says. “New technologies help us stay in touch with people whose relationships are gradually fading away. But we need to meet in person to maintain relationships. In the end, much still depends heavily on physical contact - and we have not yet learned how to transfer touch online. "
The fact that social networks increase the "expiration date" of friendship, few doubt - this is a feature for which it is customary to praise and scold Facebook. On the one hand, it helps to see what happens in the lives of those who were dear to us once, but our paths diverged. On the other hand, because of him, we may encounter those whom we would like to forget - for example, ex-partners or friends with whom we had a falling out. Thanks to the likes and comments, we still have the feeling that we actively communicate with those with whom we would like to keep in touch, but communicate as often as before, does not work. In reality, everything is a little more complicated: just how close we are, Internet activity does not determine (it’s unlikely you consider everyone who likes you to be like close friends) - but the Internet gives you the opportunity to come together again at any time and start communicating more often, online or live
In addition, the Internet has made possible what it almost did not exist before (or at least did not exist on such a scale) - to meet people outside our usual circle, simply because we have similar interests or views on life. Of course, usually we are friends with those who are close to us in spirit - but if you look closely, sometimes it turns out that geography or circumstances are our primary connection with someone: a common school, a university, work, favorite places and institutions, a similar lifestyle in the same city or the habit of going to rest in the same places. Of course, the ability to communicate with someone remotely existed before - many current twenty-thirty-year-olds as a child had pen-friends - but it was the social networks that made the process so large-scale.
First and foremost, of course, this is typical for adolescents: according to the Pew Research Center, 57% of adolescents aged 13-17 found new friends online; 29% said they found more than five friends this way. Most often this happens in social networks (as was the case with 64% of those who found friends online), in second place is online games (as was the case for 36% of respondents). At the same time, most of the relationships started on the Internet remain there - only 20% of the teenagers surveyed said that they had met with online friends in person.
"Yes, I can find out what you ate for breakfast, from a tweet, but are we getting any closer from this?"
True, online communication has its own costs. The same study on adolescents says that very many of them face the FOMO (fear that they are missing something important): 53% of respondents admitted that they had seen posts about events where they were not invited. It is easy to imagine how this can affect relations outside the network: almost everyone faced a situation where someone from their friends was offended that he was not called to a party. It also includes a reverent attitude to likes, comments and friends list (micro-reading is quite a real phenomenon): it is considered that only teenagers are acutely reacting to the “wrong” behavior in social networks - but those who are angry or upset because people put "not that" Like or communicate with someone who is unpleasant to them, it is very easy to understand. In addition, the very format of communication imposes restrictions that may affect the relationship is not the best way. In correspondence it is more difficult to understand the mood of the interlocutor: we do not feel intonation, do not see non-verbal signals and easily add additional meanings to messages (the dot at the end of the message is just a dot or a sign that a person is very angry?).
There is no unequivocal answer to the question of how the Internet influences our relationship - too much depends on a particular person and on how much effort they are willing to put both in order not to lose touch. Definitely only one thing is clear: the Internet provides many opportunities to strengthen the ties that already exist between us - you just need to use them.
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