Reading the news article, ‘Facebook criticised by Archbishop’, I wonder about our lack of faith in our understanding of relationship and friendship. To understand the implications of using social networking websites requires a longitudinal observational study. At the current time, we can only speculate what effect (good, bad or just different) it may have on community life as a whole.
What I am questioning is his usage of the word, ‘friends’ and ‘friendships’. He said, "Friendship is not a commodity” and "Friendship is something that is hard work and enduring when it's right". I completely agree with what he is saying about friendship. But are these definitions/explanations about friendship applicable to social networking based friends? Obviously our friends (those who certainly fall into Archbishop’s definitions) are also in the list of friends in the likes of Facebook. However, I would like to think that no one really consider every single listed ‘friends’ are really their friends. Some like to collect the names to add to their lists but such vanity also exists in our face to face relationship. We like to name drop especially if we know someone famous, successful and well liked. We like to give a false impression of the closeness with the person if necessary.
In a similar note, I had a bit of cultural shock when I went back to South Korea a few years ago. I noticed a change. When I spoke to a utility company, I was greeted with “Hello customer who I love, how may I help you?”. The word ‘Love’ was everywhere even the politicians were using ‘Love’ when addressing the general public. Surely, no one really thinks and believes that when the customer service talks about ‘Love’, they are talking about LOVE. We all know that collected and listed ‘friends’ in our social networking sites are not all necessarily our FRIENDS.
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