This paper looks into the psychological impacts of online friendships specifically trying to establish whether they are of value to those involved. In order to do this, it first has to look into what constitutes a friend and friendship, what drives the need to have friends, the psychological and health benefits of physical or offline relationships so as to finally be able to look at whether online friendships have the same benefits. The information contained herewith has been carefully analyzed and well presented to make sure the paper achieves its intended objectives. With well researched and cited sources, the paper provides evidence to support the claims it makes.
Psychological Effects of Online Friendships
What is a friendship and who is a friend? Before tackling the topic, it is of significance to get some common definition of terms for the purpose of understanding. Friendship may be defined as a profound connection between people, it involves such feelings as; care, admiration, respect, and love (Friendship, 2015). According to this definition, therefore, any two or more people that share the mentioned qualities are friends. According to (Lickerman, 2013), a friend is someone committed to your happiness, who values your principles and is considered a good influence. Combining both meanings, a friend can be defined as someone with whom one shares feelings of affection (not necessarily romantic), who is dedicated to their happiness, respects them and their principles and helps to mold their character positively.
The Need for Friends
The need to have friends is necessitated by the social nature of human beings. This nature is exhibited even by primates with whom humans share an evolutionary path (Friendship, 2015). Therefore, the need for friends is in a manner of speaking, a result of evolution. Looking at it this way, therefore, we see that over the years as evolution took its cause, primates saw the need to be organized in groups. Hence, the need to have friends is only but natural, it is expected that very few people would meet someone for the first time and immediately make them an enemy for no reason.
Human interaction has been there from the beginning of time and over the years trends in how people interact have changed, from the times when it had to be face-to-face, to exchange of mail, to payphones and landline phones to the current smartphone and internet-based means of keeping in touch. Every invention during this journey was motivated by the need for people to feel and be more connected even over great distances, as they say, necessity is the mother of all invention. It is these inventions that have made it possible today, to make and maintain relationships whether on or offline. Maintaining a healthy social network has been proved to positive psychological impacts and is the basis of the next part of this paper.
Psychology and Relationships
Psychological Benefits of Friendships
Research has been carried out on the benefits of having a strong network of friends on an individual. This was necessitated by the increasingly evident differences noticed among people with strong social networks when compared with those with weak networks or none at all. It has been established that a strong network of friends goes a long way in developing healthy individuals (Rankin, 2012). Specifically, research has proven that a healthy network of friends helps to relieve stress and consequently, the adverse effects that come with it such as an increased predisposition to heart disease (Woolston, 2018). Considering this and information from other sources (The health benefits of strong relationships, 2010) it can be seen that the social nature of humans has far much-reaching consequences than the obvious. In addition to these health benefits, friends have an impact psychologically, on each other and this is looked into in the next section.
Psychology in Friendships
Psychologically friends provide companionship and reduce feelings of stress (Staff, 2016). According to (Staff, 2016), the more specific psychological benefits of having friends include; sparking a feeling of belonging, reducing stress, improving a sense of self-worth and providing a firm support structure in terms of crisis such as when one loses a family member or is going through a divorce. In such cases as when one is going through an addiction recovery process then they are encouraged to keep a network of sober friends so that they can encourage and support them through the recovery process. That having close friends who actually care has an impact on the psychology of someone is proved in the research by Andrew Steptoe who found out that both feeling lonely and actually being isolated raised the risk of death within the study population (Miler, 2014). However, with the development of social media platforms, most friendships, especially among the youth, have been taken to the online platform. The question this paper asks is, do these cyberspace friendships have the same proven psychological benefits that face-to-face relationships have been known to have?
Psychology in Cyberspace Friendships.
Research into the psychological impacts of online friendships is still in its young stages with the available information currently not being adequate enough to facilitate the drawing of general conclusions about these effects (Maria Luisa Lima, 2017). Online friendships present a bittersweet situation in how they allow people to keep in touch while at the same time stealing time away from actual physical relationships. Research into the psychological impacts has mainly been focused on the young population such as campus students (one of the reasons why the findings cannot be generalized) since they are considered the most active participants on online social platforms. Some of the positive psychological impacts are; 1) online friendships help to boost the confidence of those people who have been affected by social anxiety in actual face-to-face situations, 2) the sense of anonymity maintained through social media makes people more likely to be open than they would be in face-to-face situations, 3) online social platforms offer the possibility of presenting oneself the way they want the world to see them, this is to say that one can choose how to respond to anything since they first have to type it out this, therefore, gives the users a sense of control over how they portray themselves and, 4) for those youths struggling with identity and acceptance such as LGBT, the cyberspace provides a space where they can exist without being judged and are even likely to meet other people in the same situation thus gives them a sense of identity and confidence (Petersen, 2017). These are some of the merits of online friendships.
However, it's not all good news for social media relationships, according to (S, 2017), online relationships lack among other things, the authenticity of perception using all the five senses, a characteristic which perhaps provides most of the psychological benefits in offline relationships. In another study, it was found that spending more time online results in emotional loneliness as one does not really have real intimate relationships (Maria Luisa Lima, 2017). These findings, therefore, suggest that even though online platforms offer the opportunity to make and maintain relationships, these relationships lack the intimate touch characteristic of offline friendships (Maria Luisa Lima, 2017).
Conclusion.
Considering the evidence presented and discussed in this text, it is clear that online friendships have a number of positive impacts psychologically among those involved. However, the lack of the physical aspect that is characteristic of offline relationships is a big negative on its scorecard since this results in various levels of psychological dissatisfaction. The answer to the question that has formed the basis for the discussion within the text would, therefore, be, yes, online friendships do have psychological benefits to those involved however, they are also associated with some negative effects. Perhaps the solution would be to maintain a balance between online and offline relationships in which case one is able to reap the benefits of both worlds.
References
Friendship. (2015, 07 08). Retrieved from GoodTherapy.org: https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/friendship
Lickerman, A. (2013, December 15). The True Meaning Of Friendship. Retrieved from Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-in-world/201312/the-true-meaning-friendship
Maria Luisa Lima, S. M. (2017, January 30). All You Need Is Facebook Friends? Associations between Online and Face-to-Face Friendships and Health. Retrieved from Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 68.: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00068/full
Miler, A. (2014, January). Friends wanted. Retrieved from American Psychological Association: http://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/01/cover-friends.aspx
Petersen, N. (2017, January 27). The Pros and Cons of Online Friendships. Retrieved from AllPsych: https://blog.allpsych.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-online-friendships/
Rankin, L. (2012, May 08). The Health Benefits of True Friendship. Retrieved from Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/owning-pink/201205/the-health-benefits-true-friendship
S, S. (2017, December 11). Do You Understand the Psychology of Online Relationships? Retrieved from Paired Life: https://pairedlife.com/dating/online-relationships
Staff, M. C. (2016, September 28). Friendships: Enrich your life and improve your health. Retrieved from Mayo Clinic: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/in-depth/friendships/art-20044860
The health benefits of strong relationships. (2010, December). Retrieved from Harvard Health Publishing: https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/the-health-benefits-of-strong-relationships
Woolston, C. (2018, January 20). Health Benefits of Friendship. Retrieved from HealthDay: https://consumer.healthday.com/encyclopedia/emotional-health-17/psychology-and-mental-health-news-566/health-benefits-of-friendship-648397.html
