Social Media Affecting Friendships

        Did you know that the average person spends 4 years of their lifetime looking down at a phone? It's kind of ironic isn’t it? Continuing on my ongoing research, I am going to now talk about how countless friendships have been ruined as a result of social media. As we all know, a large number of friendships commence on the Internet. However, with that, there's a limit to how many friends we can actually have. Mentally, we can't keep track of more than 250 real-life people, but most of us have many more online friends. That means a 20 year old with a thousand online friends is more likely collecting friends for status purposes – no real friendship. Also, trying to keep track of hundreds of online friends online dilutes our energy and attention away from the people we really care about. 

         Cherie Burbach wrote in her article, How Social Media Gets in the way of Friendships, "social media is what has changed the way we keep in touch and communicate." This statement is true since even when we are out hanging with out friends, we are posting on social media telling our “social media friends” what we are up to. 

        The media is used as a tool to let out emotions about people whom may never know how you're thinking about a situation. Numerous amounts of people like to let their feelings out by venting and letting their stress out on Twitter by sending tweets. Most times we think we are the cause of this so then we start venting and staring all this drama that could lead to the termination a friendship from just one tweet that most likely wasn’t about you. 

Burbach, Cherie. "6 Ways Social Media Is Ruining Your Friendship." About.com Dating & Relationships. Web. 14 May 2016.