Shawn Day
English
Persuasive essay
Social Media fails at
true friendship
Like the car commercial where the daughter makes fun of her
parents only having nineteen friends on facebook yet she has over six hundred.
True friendships are rarely made through social media. The term friend in
today’s internet prone world has become so over used much like saying I love
you with every crush. What people growing up with social media think is their
friends are nothing more than acquaintance’s.
Friends are people that will go to a funeral with you, will
loan you money when times are hard, will come over and spend hours with you
just talk when you’re feeling down just to cheer you up. With social media many people have
acquaintance’s that they talk to from time to time about different things and some of those people they may not even
know what they look like yet in today’s world they call them friends.
“Social media forces upon us a feeling of intimacy and
closeness that doesn’t actually exist.” By Jay Baer.
Just because you talk to someone with any form of social
media such as email, public Twitter, Twitter DM, public Facebook, Facebook
messages, Facebook chat, Linkedin messages, public Google +, Google + messages,
blog comments, Skype, text messages, Instagram, phone, voice mail, and several
topically or geographically specific forums, groups and social networks. These
form of connecting rarily creates a real friendship, if you got shot and died sure
all of them would talk about it but how many of your say six-hundred “friends”
would actually come to your funeral, how many would sit down with your parents,
spouse, kids to help them through the tough times? This is why I don’t like
social media while it has us talking to more and more people we never would’ve
met otherwise to many people in today’s society are trading out or neglecting
real friends for talking to people they hardly know online.
A study done by schools.com as well as USA Today found that
real world friendships involve more interdependence, breadth, depth,
understanding, and commitment. Twenty four percent of people surveyed said they
missed important life moments because they were too busy trying to share
something on social media sites.
With social media we meet a lot of people yet spend less
time going out and making new life long relationships. Before social media I
remember being at a different friend’s house every weekend barbecuing and
several of my really good friends I met at these events themselves being
invited by someone else there. Or organizing sports games like football,
baseball, bowling on a weekly basis.
There seems there is always something to talk about with all
of these outlet’s we have in today’s world, but how many of the things we say
has any meaning anymore. I watch my kids on facebook, texting, online gaming,
emailing, yet with all of these things they don’t have any friends. They sit at
home on their computers and its like pulling teeth to get them to go outside or
anywhere with us to do activities. My son who is five has about 7 different
boys who knock on the door daily asking for him to play or to see if he can go
somewhere with them such as swimming. These are youthful friendships that have
some meat to them. He has people who actually want to hang out with him, go
places with him, even ask him if he’s ok when he gets hurt and bring him home
to us. While my three daughter’s only hang out with their cousins. They range
in age at nine, thirteen, fifteen and my nine year old recently went somewhere
with a real world friend because I stress the importance of meeting real people
to her, but my two oldest never have friends over they never go to visit any
friends. They claim they have lots of friends and yet never leave the house to
hang out with anyone. They chat online constantly, but when they are older what
childhood memories will they have of their friends?
