Is friendship a transaction?
The answer is no.
Who are our real friends?
As a kid or a teenager, our process of making friends tends to be super fast and unfiltered. Since kids are not mature enough to know the real definition of a good friendship, as we go through phases in what we enjoy, we then quite often, and our friends change along the way.
When I think of my friends, I think of the quality instead of the quantity. What’s more meaningful to me in a good friendship is when we both take time to develop together and help/push each other to grow more. To celebrate and uplift each other as we support with trust and being compassionate.
Can we replace our online friends with the actual ones?
According to J. H. Søraker, from an empirical point of view, there have been numerous studies suggesting that virtual friendships do not replace actual ones in any significant manner. Another much-discussed study had a similar conclusion, but also provided evidence that (and this is what caught the media headlines): ‘‘the more time people spend using the Internet, the more they lose contact with their social environment’’
(Nie and Erbring 2002, p. 275).
As technology has become a big part of our lives nowadays, the internet plays an important tool for us to connect to people from all over the world. I agree that we could always talk and share everything with our virtual friends and online friendships are real too, but can they physically be there with us when needed?
“ It is initially difficult to compare actual and virtual friendship unless we have a more concrete definition of what it is that constitutes a genuine friendship”. ( J. H. Søraker, 214)
“Without friends, no one would want to live, even if they had all other worldly things.”
-Aristotle-
Aristotle saw virtue friendships as the true joys of life and a life well-lived must include truly meaningful, lasting friendships; good friends are good to each other. While his impact can still be felt in the many different subjects today, maybe the most accurate of his observations relate to friendship.
A meaningful friendship is someone you don’t have to constantly communicate with but will still always be a pillar for you. A good friend has to be someone who constantly motivates you to be your best self and someone who will love you unconditionally. Some friends come into your life and leave but with the precious few, we shall live our lives happily.
Thank you for your post! Recently I reconsidered what friend means to me. It is really hard to find a "perfect fried" that could support all of your emotional needs. Therefore, actual friends and virtual friends are not on the opposite sides. All of them could be my best friends.
ReplyDeleteIt would help if all of the texts are in the same fonts. Also, for the last picture, it seems like the texts is beneath the picture. These improvements may be convenient for readers.
Lina, I really enjoyed your blog post. It was very easy to read and the format was very well done. These use of splitting paragraphs and visual aid and different fonts used for quotes and etc were very appealing to the eye. Given the actual topic, regarding online friends, I personally think that friends from online can become as genuine as friends you meet in real life. One of my hobbies is to play video games and I meet a lot of friends through this platform. Some of these people I meet I end up getting to know them a lot better and consider them closer friends to people I know in person as well. One thing I would focus on would be to summarize or focus on the overall main topic of the reading rather than pulling a specific quote. Otherwise, great post.
ReplyDelete