Internet brings closer and qualifies ties between friends – 06/29/2023 – Tech

The biggest challenge of this debate is to scrutinize the preconized universe, the internet, without losing sight of the particular type of relationship in focus, friendship.

Many social platforms adopt the term friend to refer to connections because it is used in graph modeling and is friendly. But being literal proves inadequate. It is wrong, for example, who thinks that the main vector of use of TikTok, the most relevant network today, is friendship.

According to a recent Nielsen survey, what its users are most looking for is personal expression and trends; other platforms based on human showcases follow along, which makes it inadvisable to equate them to the internet in this context.

According to the most recent census (2023), the main reason for accessing the network is informational research. There are those who say that the only knowledge that matters in a friendship is that which involves the participants, the so-called epistemic partialism, but this view is in the minority. The main one says that knowledge strengthens friendships. Soon, the internet does it, broadening horizons and the opinion potential of the arrivals.

The second reason for access is the connection with friends and family, which prima facie endorse the accepted argument. Its current exponents are messaging applications (such as WhatsApp), whose low friction and asynchronous nature serve both established relationships and the formation of friendships, through journeys of gradual approximation. These internet silos lead to the multiplication of groups of assumptions, where ties are rekindled and affective relationships are formed, often in the shadow of common enemies.

As much as friendships break down due to ideological differences, the most attentive analyzes show that the dominant interpersonal tensions are between strangers, acquaintances and relatives.

In the field of friendships, polarization adds and qualifies more than it subtracts ties —this is the bitter lesson of the flat-Earther digital broderage, which takes shape far from battle fronts, such as Twitter.

A consequence of this reasoning is that it is not possible to assume that the multiplication and deepening of friendships, due to the technological reduction of entry and support barriers, signal moral progress and greater social harmony. What we call bubbles, amazingly, is what the insiders call a beloved group of friends.