Some years earlier, when the verb to 'friend' was created by those who used Myspace, it specifically indicated that they precisely understood that befriending is not the same as building virtual connections.
Many people, in reality, see the distinction between virtual friends and actual friends. If pressed or asked, most adults or people above the age of eighteen will agree that actual friends are different from virtual friends. Although virtual friends are inexpensive, quick, and probably unhealthy, it is so plain that real friends are firm and faithful. However, a significant section of teenagers, particularly with the digital connection technology favoring quantity over quality, profoundly dilute the special familiarity of real friendship and virtual friendship. The distinction between real befriending and virtual friending is of great importance for the reasons that in the terrain of human relations, lack of this peculiarity can lead to fast loss of the moral content of friendship.
Friending Appeals to the Ego, and it is About Popularity
Friending appeals to the ego to a large extent given the fact that in social networks, the number of successful targets of an individual's network page serves as an evidence of friending appealing to the ego. Whenever we merely follow someone, retweet, link to, quote, bestow recognition and awards, compliment and praise we are dealing with their ego, intentionally or otherwise. Friending is a social contact and not a social contract among fellow online voyagers. This implies that it is about popularity rather than a genuine social connection.
Friending can Transform into Friendship, and it Requires In-Person Contact
Friending can transform to friends whereby the two parties can develop mutual affection and make in-person contact such that such that they can take risks and make sacrifices on behalf of each other. In other words, friending, through constant electronic connectivity such as texting, can act as a platform for developing a real friendship or rather befriending. Friendship requires in-person contact.
Extent and Degree that Social Networking is Friendship Community
Social networks comprise of an array of strangers, stragglers, various joiners, admirers, fans, business contacts, friends of friends, schoolmates and old flames, neighbors, co-workers, present and past acquaintances, family members, and both close and not-so-close friends. This tells that it is to some extent a friendship community in cases of friends, family members, close friends, and maybe neighbors, and schoolmates.
