Social media has allowed people to have more connections and friends on the online world than ever before. However, without the interactions that happen when we meet people in person it is hard to develop personal relationships over the internet. Maria Konnikova addresses this idea in her article “The Limits of Friendship” which speaks about how we bond socially and if it can be done over the internet. In addition, the use of the internet causes people to lose a feeling of unity due to the boredom and impersonality buried in social media. Bill Wasik speaks about this in his article “My Crowd Experiment: The Mob Project” where he addresses people’s need for social interaction as a cure for boredom. Social interaction and in-group experience
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Maria Konnikova agrees when she writes, “Isn’t it easier to have more friends when we have Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to help us cultivate and maintain them?” in her article “The Limits of Friendship” (237). She addresses an important question, does social media make it easier to have more friends? Her question also encompasses the idea of whether more friends on social media can help with people’s boredom or if it takes in-person interaction to cure this feeling. The answer to both of these are, simply, that having more friends on social media does not help people feel any less bored, and does not help them develop any personal relationships to help them feel a group identity. Writing in his article “My Crowd Experiment: The Mob Project,” Bill Wasik explains, “My idle stretches have been erased by the grace of the internet, with its soothingly fast and infinitely available distractions, engaging me for hours on end without assuaging my fundamental boredom in any way,” (475). In other words, Wasik is saying that when he became bored he would look to the internet to distract him, but it never lessened his feeling of boredom. Eventually, with Wasik’s mobs he would find his boredom cured, without in-person social interactions it was hard for him and those who participated to sway their boredom. It was necessary for them to get off the internet and interact with others in order to develop a group
Maria Konnikova agrees when she writes, “Isn’t it easier to have more friends when we have Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to help us cultivate and maintain them?” in her article “The Limits of Friendship” (237). She addresses an important question, does social media make it easier to have more friends? Her question also encompasses the idea of whether more friends on social media can help with people’s boredom or if it takes in-person interaction to cure this feeling. The answer to both of these are, simply, that having more friends on social media does not help people feel any less bored, and does not help them develop any personal relationships to help them feel a group identity. Writing in his article “My Crowd Experiment: The Mob Project,” Bill Wasik explains, “My idle stretches have been erased by the grace of the internet, with its soothingly fast and infinitely available distractions, engaging me for hours on end without assuaging my fundamental boredom in any way,” (475). In other words, Wasik is saying that when he became bored he would look to the internet to distract him, but it never lessened his feeling of boredom. Eventually, with Wasik’s mobs he would find his boredom cured, without in-person social interactions it was hard for him and those who participated to sway their boredom. It was necessary for them to get off the internet and interact with others in order to develop a group