Quick note before this post: I would likely put the Naysayer portion and response in its own paragraph since it extends this paragraph quite far and makes it a bit daunting.
In my particular experience, social media immensely impacts my friendships. Since it opens up a whole other method of communication and keeping up with people that I likely would have lost touch with. My stance on excessive social network use falls within maintaining previously created friendships, not forming new ones. Personally, developing connections occurs in person to get the entire impression of someone. This standpoint varies from both works, though combines elements of both. Where I agree with Chen is the advantage social media provides in terms of contact networking, and for Konnikova, it indicates a temperance of its use. When communicating in person, one can observe body language and fully listen to others, gaining a more comprehensive understanding of their personality. Observing one’s mannerisms is an advantageous life skill one could miss out on due to technology interference in society. Subtle cues in body movement can express one’s discomfort, engagement, or other emotions one cannot garner from text. In a world without the privilege of surveying body language, miscommunication is abundant due to the brain’s misinterpretation of written text. It is common to internally cause errors when reading natural speech inflections, which one does not have to think about during direct communication. In writing, text can be read in various ways inside one’s head, leading to misunderstandings when read in a different tone than the author’s intent. Yet some internet users may challenge this perception of social media by asserting that creating friendships is possible through video calls. Such means of communicating allows “face-to-face” contact through a screen to transcend the flaws in reading messages. For instance, during the pandemic, many resorted to social media to create and continue contacting friends they were not allowed to see in person, myself included. Strangers who were lonely resorted to alternative methods of contact with those they had never met before, by use of Discord, Skype, FaceTime, and WhatsApp, to name a few. People across the globe found a commonplace on the internet to cure boredom through communication and utilizing video chats. Day in and day out, humanity is able to speak somewhat ordinarily to each other despite the technology involved, keeping our social skills sharpened to an extent. I am no different than these people, as I participated in video calls with others I had never met and lived far away from on numerous occasions. While I agree with the prospects of maintaining friendships and attempting to develop them during this time through social media’s video calling options, it lacks critical details from real-life interactions. For starters, it lacks eye contact, a strategy used to retain focus and comprehension in conversation. Body movements are limited, if not entirely removed from these scenarios, with people’s views obstructed by webcams, resulting in a disconnect of emotional understanding. In particular, hugs are a typical means of comforting an individual in distress, a physical nearness that the body, on a biological level, craves, as depicted in Konnikova’s piece that social media and video calls have yet to recreate. Returning to regular activities following the pandemic, people are no longer isolated and revert to their in-person friendships. Even if this is not the case for some, and they made internet friends, their lives get busier with work or attending various events, removing the time that was dedicated to someone who exists solely online, causing the relationship to abate. Employing moderation of social media in real-life settings strengthens pre-built relationships, but it struggles to produce an environment that creates long-lasting friendships alone.
