MY REACTION TO THE FORBES ARTICLE “HAS SOCIAL MEDIA RUINED THE IDEA OF FRIENDSHIP?”
Social Media is too superficial for the development of friendship and makes us lonely – a common perception, shared by Ira Bedzow , author of the Forbes article “Has social media ruined the idea of friendship?” When I saw that headline in Forbes Magazine I was very intrigued, since my mission with Con.tact Worldwide Match is the exact opposite – to create connections between people that are meaningful. Recently I wrote an article here on LinkedIn about how the con.tact app actually makes it easier to develop friendships. Online, we find it easier to open up and get to know the people we are matching with more quickly. This match serves as an icebreaker, the spark that can ignite a friendship! The ethicist Ira Bedzow who wrote the Forbes article agrees to the fact that technology has made it easier to stay in touch with friends and “to start new friendships with people we might never have met, but who share our beliefs or values—and, most importantly, our need for connection.”?But he argues that there is a big difference between organically grown offline friendships and friendships that originated from social media.
COMMONALITY IS MUCH MORE SIMPLY FOUND ONLINE!
According to the article “online communities exist by virtue of a shared purpose or function” and “the value of individual members depends on their loyalty to the group’s mission statement” whereas offline communities “find commonality based on a shared life”. My personal experience has taught me differently. During my studies in Berlin, I found it very hard to find people in “real life” who share the same interests as me, be it horse riding or entrepreneurship. Everyone was very busy with their own lives. Maybe here also the difference between making friends in the countryside and in cities becomes obvious. But that’s for another blog entry. ??
I think, the value of an individual member of a family or a neighbourhood can also depend on the loyalty to the group’s mission statement. This can be the case when the family runs a family business and family members are expected to contribute to the success of the enterprise. Of course, the worth of the individual family member should be detached from his or her contribution to the business but in reality, this might often not be the case. The ability to fulfil expectations can be tightly related to the position a family member might occupy within the family dynamics.
Vice versa it might be possible to find commonality based on a group’s “mission statement” online. My friends who are mothers, for example, tell me that they found friends online based on the desire to raise their children according to concept of attachment parenting. In real life they might not find touchpoints with their neighbours or family members on that topic. But being connected via social media, the shared interest connects them immediately.
IGNITE THE FIRE ONLINE AND LET IT SIZZLE OFFLINE!
The train of thought I however share with Bedzow is that social media, as of now, is making us more lonely than we have ever been. Reason for that being fakeness:
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“Experts and laypeople alike have meticulously manufactured their surroundings—using artificial lighting and purposefully positioned backgrounds—not only to convey a certain identity to people watching. It is also done to portray our own personal brand to ourselves. We use the tools at our disposal to create the personas we want to show the world.”?
And I 100% agree with this. Here we must ask ourselves what that desperately desired connection that human beings need to not feel lonely really means. I see social media as the tool that can ignite it. But it has to be developed in real life. The technology must serve what it means to be human and not destroy it. That’s why I founded Con.tact Worldwide Match . I want to rethink and redo the concept of Social Media.
Bedzow quotes Dr. Martin Luther King:
“Men hate each other because they fear each other. They fear each other because they don’t know each other and they don’t know each other because they don’t communicate with each other, and they don’t communicate with each other because they are separated from each other.”
Yes, social media creates a “superficial” connection, but I think nothing more should be expected from it. Deep conversations and long-lasting connection needs to come from communication offline. Hence, I agree with Bedzow’s conclusion that “we need to communicate with each other. But not by tweet.” However, social media can provide a promising opportunity for people to connect that would otherwise have never had the chance to meet based on their interests.
I would like to discuss with you: What does it mean to challenge the status quo of social media apps? For me one of the crucial factors is keeping the time between a match, a connection online and a meaningful conversation offline as short as possible. That’s why on con.tact you match with someone with shared interests who is located within 20 Meters distance to you. The match ignites the fire, but the sizzling needs more than the ignition, it needs the real-life interaction. But without the ignition no fire can develop in the first place.