Your "Real" Friends are Your Online Friends (or so Says Gen Y)
Is it easier to talk to your online buddies than your friends out there in the "real world?" Do you feel like you know more about what's happening in the lives of your Facebook and MySpace friends than with those who don't have accounts or don't bother to update them? According to a recent UK MySpace study of over 16,000 social network users, these sorts of feelings are common among today's younger generation. The study revealed that a good portion of this group admits to feeling more comfortable sharing and communicating with friends online than they do when logged out of cyberspace.
Online: Sharing is Easier, Friends Know You Better
The MySpace study asked social networking users between the ages of 14 and 21 (aka "Generation Y") questions about their interactions both on social networks and in their real life, too. Some 36% of the respondents said they found it easier to talk about themselves online than in the real world, leading them to share more about themselves using technology. This group also felt that their online friends knew more about them, and so, in a sense, were closer than offline friends because they all knew what was going on in each other's lives.
Outside of the social networking sites, the survey respondents overwhelmingly felt ill-at-ease in social groups. A whopping 72% said they felt "left out" and didn't think they fit into any particular group. More than four-fifths (82%) said they moved between four or more different groups of friends in an effort to find acceptance.
It's not entirely surprising that the younger generation feels this way. The teen years (and young adulthood to some extent) are a time when kids start exploring and experimenting with many different aspects of their personalities as they attempt to solidify who they are and who they will become as adults. What's interesting, though, is how social networking is having an impact on this traditional coming-of-age process. Instead of simply feeling disjointed, confused, and lonely, today's younger generation has an outlet for connecting with their peers which previous generations did not: the internet.
Says Rebekah Horne, MySpace Europe managing director, the study provides insight into how this generation is "using online as a way to explore and settle into their burgeoning identities."
But at what cost?
Will the younger generations remain awkward and shy in the real world as they age, only finding comfort in their interactions that occur online? Or does having an outlet for their feelings simply lessen the blow delivered by the otherwise often harsh process that is growing up?
In many ways, easy access to technology can be seen as both a blessing and a curse for this young group of digital natives. These days, you'll often encounter teens having text message conversations or posting status updates while ignoring the very friends they're present with in the real world. Behavior like this could certainly send a message to the others that they are second priority to whomever else has engaged their friend's attention. That could easily lead to feelings of being "left out" as reported in this study.
And yet, at the same time, it's this very technology that's allowing the teens and young adults to feel like they have friends who know them and care about them.The issue is balancing that online life with the one out in the real world.
The question as to whether this sort of behavior is healthy is one best left to psychologists to analyze and report, but there's no doubt that at the very least, it is having an impact.
Image credit: flickr user Paulo Fehlauer
Share
Facebook
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
Frankly, it is quite a worrying trend that people are getting less and less face to face contacts and spend more time social networking thru the net.
As with anything, it has to be taken in moderation and if abused then should be stopped. I think the social sites make it easy for families and friends (real life) to stay in touch. Take my example, I am in Japan, most of my friends and family are in the US, I call my brothers once a week and I stay in touch with them and other family online. I use other tools like Yahoo or Live, and Skype sometimes. As well as the good old email, they are not using Twitter yet.
It is my responsibility to regulate who my friends are and know the difference.
The better you know somebody the easier to interact. Also I have not seen any studies that shows time spend online has minimized time spend with friends. The online activity time more takes away from TV or gaming. Humas are social beings and like to be with other humans and Facebook will not change that. I would have loved these options when I was 14 and been able to connect with freinds and find new friends how shared my interest.
Claus
www.verticpotals.com
lets be upfront though: most people are now under the assumption that looking at someones posted updates means they are good friends with that person without having ever to have a challenging conversation with them in an attempt to solve a difficult problem.
as a mid 20 something, i find most of my peers are incapable of having any level of conversation, not even a superficial level. when a real issue or problem arises....
I saw this kind of thing emerging among my Gen X friends about 10 years ago. Thing is, many of them at some point or another, made a point to meet offline. Online interaction makes meeting offline often easier. With kids, however, they probably don't think of that any more than they think of setting up a "safe call" when meeting someone of the opposite sex...
So, why aren't the parents taking the lead, and suggesting to their kids that they meet their online friends f2f, and perhaps hosting a party to do so? This is what the Gen Xers did, and it really isn't all that difficult to do.
I'm always shocked how parents today abdicate any responsibility for helping their kids negotiate things like this. They can plead ignorance and "generational differences" re the internet but it' just downright stupid lazy parenting.
This is not limited to the new generation. This has been true since as long as people were able to interact with and make friends online, i.e long before the so called social networks even existed (the latter's only innovation was, essentially, the wall and the ability to select who has access to various aspects of your online persona, thus building the social graph).
The difference is that it is completely mainstream nowadays, whereas people would look at you funny, fifteen years ago or more, when you would say that you had met with and interacted with people online.
Personally, I am not alarmed. This ability to be yourself and open more easily when online can be good training for people to be themselves and more open when offline, especially with people who have already let them in, online, into more intimate spheres of their inner selves, as it is hard for most people, I think, to really let go and discuss feelings openly in a face to face situation. Of course, a good balance between online and offline interaction is necessary.
And yes, it is really annoying and disrespectful when people ignore you, in person, to interact with online buddies. That is where the new generation might be quite different from the older ones. Maybe they just naturally feel that the online and offline worlds are only one interaction space, but the problem is that the other cannot feel that way when he is not connected to the online buddies too. It is as if you were attending multiple parties at the same time and not being 100% with anyone in any of those parties. I wonder how women of the newer generation, especially, feel about that. I know people who text under the table while having a romantic dinner with their wife or girlfriend. Bizarre!
Great article - Hits the nail right on the head if you ask me.
I personally admit to feeling more comfortable sharing intimate details about my life to someone online (particularly in a far off country). Why? Because they're far more interesting to talk to and I know deep down that they'll never blab to anyone in my immediate physical vicinity unlike real live people.
Online friends are not true friends. Friends are people that you see, touch in person and date frecuently. Friends are not people like a fan club of Angelina Jolie... No, Angelina is not your friend becasue you know everything about her... Sorry for that guys but they havent got friends. Do not believe such commercial shit... try to go out the socials networks and see how many people ask for you... you are another account more... not a friend of them. Only some people in the instant messengers can be asking themselves about you but not all the guys in the IMs...
I agree that this is not new. John Perry Barlow wrote an essay years ago about how his online friends rallied around him after his partner died. I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing either.
There's a bit of a paradox in this. If we live and work in communities, then we build a complex set of relationships with the people around us. When we travel to centralized work spaces and spend most of our days away from friends and family, it makes perfect sense that we would be better able to connect with chosen associates online than in our cubicle "prisons."
I don't necessarily think that the part about "fitting in" means anything without comparing to earlier generations. As this writeup points out, that really characterizes adolescents in general.
But also technological advances have changed adolescence as well as the other eras of life for some time (e.g. automobiles and the sexual revolution). We can moan and groan, or we can find ways to communicate our core principles to our kids so that they will make good decisions about their lives, relationships, and social etiquette no matter what new situations arise.
"Will the younger generations remain awkward and shy in the real world as they age, only finding comfort in their interactions that occur online?"
No.
I'm 22, and I spend far more time online than most of my generation. If it was true that online activity made you introverted, I would be the poster child of this social handicap.
But online social networks like Twitter and Facebook have done more to connect me with friends in offline activities than anything. In many cases I've met close friends online who I would never have met without these online spaces.
Posted by: stevenwalling.com
|
August 10, 2009 3:30 PM
Sarah, insightful. I'm sitting at starbucks. Two 3rd grade boys slurped their frappachinos while playing handheld sony games. I got paper from the bux fax. I made them paper airplanes. They went outside and were amazed that paper can fly.
I return to my g1 google phone to type this.
A real friend will:
1. Lend you money
2. Help you move
3. If your girlfriend (or landlord) kicks you out, they let you move in with them until you find a new place, even if their girlfriend is really unhappy about it.
That's a real friend. If you've never had the need for a real friend, you probably won't recognize what I'm talking about; but if you have, you know exactly what I mean.
Good luck contacting the online friend if you need help. You may be able to type a tear-stained message to them, but as Antony mention, they won't lend you money or help you move.
The idea that people are "connecting" or "socializing" via these sites is absurd. I have used them for the past couple of years and gotten notes from people I haven't spoken to in 20+ years. We exchange a couple of comments and that is it. Have I "connected" with that person? Of course not. No more so than reading an article or interview with a celebrity means I am connected to them. This illusion of social interaction is baffling to me. The ego involved with needing to let hundreds of "friends" (many of whom you have likely never met) know what you are doing every moment and assuming they care is simply astonishing. I am deleting my social networking sites. If someone wants to know what I am doing may I make a suggestion? ASK ME. Call me up or if you are too lazy to dial a phone, email me. And then get up from the computer and go for a walk, WITHOUT YOUR CELL PHONE. Take a look at the world around you for a change. Smile at a stranger. You might be surprised at how "social" the world can be when you actually look at a person that you are talking to.
-Rusty Knorr
I use other tools like Yahoo or Live sometimes.
When I was a teenager, I spent literal hours on the phone with my friends. I lived a good fifteen minutes drive out of town, had no car, no bus lines, no kids my age as near neighbors. I exchanged phone numbers with my classmates and kept in touch outside of school.
I found that I could say things on the phone and when passing notes that I couldn't say face to face. I accepted that as normal. Some things were just too personal to say directly.
I met some friends at an academic camp several thousand miles away from home. I developed a sudden interest in correspondence, and racked up scary phone bills. Email, free and instant email, was a sudden blessing. I adjusted. I kept my long-distance friends. I kept my local friends. I still spent hours on the phone.
The comments here say things about online friendships, how they aren't "real". Let me tell you a bit about my online social groups. They are real. I do real work providing tech support, moderating community discussion, and writing documentation online. I work with real people on the other end of the chat, and the users are no less real for all that I don't see them and I don't emotionally engage with them the way I do with my colleagues and friends online.
It is true that there are a lot of people in them that I have never met in person, and a certain number of them who I would not care to meet in person.
It's true that you probably wouldn't be able to ask one of your internet friends to borrow $100 in a time of need. You might, however, be able to ask 100 of your internet friends to pitch in $1 or $2 in a time of need.
Take SJ Tucker. If you get appendicitis without health insurance, you are pretty financially screwed. But a whole bunch of people pulled together for her. People who couldn't give spread the word. http://www.skinnywhitechick.com/announcement.php http://community.livejournal.com/saveours00j/11763.html
One of the first things I do when I meet someone face to face that I think I would get along with, is I exchange contact information with them. I let them in to my digital world, or I worry about do I know them well enough to let them into my digital world, do I want to take the emotionally intimate step of letting them know the connection between my legal name and my real name (the name I use online). It is my real name. I answer to it, just like I answer to the nickname my mother gave me. The name on my birth certificate has only ever been for school, work, and paperwork; my online handle is no less really my name because I chose it for myself and use it online.
If I get to know somebody well enough to give them my real contact information (not just add them back on Facebook), I am trusting them not just into the circle of people with whom I hang online, but with the years of social capital I have built up under my name. Someone possessed of my name can see what kind of person I am, what kind of things I read, the things I discuss, who I associate with. It's a rather lot of information to dump on someone, and that's just the public part.
Once someone from face to face has my online information, they're free to get to know me better, and they have the same chances as any of my other online friends do at becoming someone with whom I voluntarily hang out face to face.
The tradition of meeting up in person is still going strong. One particular online social group of mine -- volunteer technical support for a particular online forum -- has firm traditions about meeting up in person whenever possible. I first met representatives of that group in person Thanksgiving of 2006, and it was amazing to spend time with people I already knew and liked -- including people I hadn't realized were in the same city!
Based on hanging out for a few hours that Thanksgiving (plus seeing each other regularly online), one of the guys wound up spending a week on the floor of my studio apartment (in Arizona) while his dorms (in California) were closed for spring break, because he didn't want to go home to his parents (in Florida). By the end of that week he was like a brother to me and my roommate. He spent the summer in our city too -- a friend we had met at another writing-related online community local meetup had started hanging out with us weekly, and she offered to host him for the summer as there was not room in our apartment.
(Not all internet meetups are that good. During his spring break visit, we brought him along to a hangout night with another guy from the writing-related online community, at which point we found out that the guy was not OK with a purely friendly hug from a gay man, and we departed his place at gunpoint, never to return, even though he invited us back the next week(!!) as if nothing had happened. He had been drunk at the time.)
I have since moved states. When I arrived, I found I was in the same city as someone I have known online for coming up on 15 years now, from yet a third internet social group. We hang out on a weekly basis, schedule permitting. There are various delighted meetups with online friends passing through the city. Every now and then a few social groups intersect; it turns out that a friend of this longtime friend is actually a former housemate of my favorite cousin. (My favorite cousin and I collided at a family gathering, eyed each other suspiciously, bonded over shared internet culture and favorite books, exchanged high-value contact information, and have most recently gotten into a competition about who can send the most disturbing link to the other one. Right now I think I'm ahead.)
Once my virtual "little brother" and I were in the same state, we wound up going the 100 miles out of our way to hang out every few weekends, mostly for site work. We had enough fun in the process that the rest of the support gang wished they were there too, and my longtime friend (also a friend of his, through a schoolmate) declared that she'd join the support crew and do whatever just so she could take part in the site work insanity.
Most recently, I've fallen into an online social group of fans of a particular new author's writing. It is important to note that this is an author of Young Adult fiction; therefore, the fans are mostly teenage girls, the very demographic that feels most at home communicating electronically. There are clusters of people who already know each other from school and the like. One of my friends from the tech support group joined, to my delight.
It has hardly been two months since the book was released, and I do not even know how many actual physical meetups some of the members of the group have had. They came up with this on their own, not because some older and wiser member of the fandom was urging them to -- they decided that it would be a great lark to go to some of the book signings, meet up, have fun. So they started doing this, and have started figuring out how to identify each other in a crowd, and making plans to get together outside of signings. Teenagers. Meeting on the internet. Getting together in person. There are electronic sing-alongs. A mail exchange. A perpetual chatroom ostensibly about the books, that gets taken over with geometry and language lessons. It has the air of multiplayer note-passing, complete with multicolored text and running jokes.
I don't worry that these girls are losing their humanity to the internet. They'll do just fine. I do worry that maybe some of them won't find good electronic role models. They have their parents and teachers to show them how to behave face to face, but who is going to show them how to become good digital citizens when people my age and older can't even behave themselves?
"Some 36% of the respondents said they found it easier to talk about themselves online than in the real world, leading them to share more about themselves using technology." Well of course it is. If you don't think you'll ever meet this person, and you can drop them like a hot rock if things don't go well, then you don't have anything to lose. But if you don't have anything to lose, you don't really have anything to gain either.
Loved the article. Let's cut GenY some slack. Don't we elders remember that we wrote letters, passed notes in school, and many times preferred to be in the background until we decided to take the relationship up a level to a face-to-face? I love social networking and the ability to find people around the world with whom I can have a discussion, an information discovery episode, or share a brief moment in time. Remember pen pals? No different, just faster responses. Do I interact in person any less? No.
To add to Anthony's post
1. Would you be able to identify your online friend in a crowd of people at a social gathering?
2. Could your online friend pick you up at the bus stop because you missed your bus and can't be late to work anymore?
I know an online friend can actually be a real friend but how often does that happen.
Get out more and build up your network of Real Friends!
"Real" friends? Or friends of convenience? Face to face contact is the most risky. Social networking via technology reduces the risk by adding a layer of insulation to the encounter. But don't make any mistake! The most valued friendships are the ones that endure the risks we take to build them.
I have seen entirely too many cases of close friends completely disconnecting from the real world -- flunking out of school, losing jobs, cut ties with real friends and family -- all for the safe haven found in the virtual realm. Instead of taking to textbooks, a good friend of mine instead spent most of his time on Ventrillo playing an MMO. And what did he get out of that? He was kicked out of his great Undergraduate program, and his parents abandoned him completely. The internet is an arguably essential modern tool, but addictions to it seem to rival even the hardest drugs of the real world.
People of various ages reach out to others in so many ways. It is a good idea to maintain a balance and practice all of one's healthy socialization skills in person as well as online! All are valid and necessary. As for the young adults out there, beware of unsavory types ready to take advantage of your too trusting and experimental stage of life as it may cost you yours. As for the person who is knocking parents, I doubt s/he even is one, so be careful about criticizing. As one who has been a teen, young adult, and parent of teens, being sensitive to those around you is always in good form. Those who feel blown off become the most explosive...remember Columbine? Keep people reined in. We need each other in real time. Seriously.
A study only of MySpace users is not a legitimate way to find out what Gen Y thinks.
MySpace users are just one type of social networkers. The computer does tend to allow people to express themselves more freely than in person. Our reach is extended further over the internet using several mediums. Studies show that people tend to act one way in person towards others, and more openly when not in person. This is a behavior that existed before the internet and computers.
i suspect that for many teens, their online friends have allowed them to find a "tribe" - people who share their interests and offer a support network. for some kids, queer kids come to mind, that's a tremendous, potentially life-saving blessing.
This is very much the way today's generation feels...its all to "real". We who are full matured adults felt this but not to the extent the teens today have been treated under the same circumstances...the issues of ill-treatment, not belonging, living up to peers have gotten out of control...these kids have faced death and mayham within their circles. If this country wants to embark on "helping the kids feel a sense of worth" at school, in their partaking of sports, or just hanging at the lounge of their favorite spot, we must bring the schools up to a higher standard...very little has given to the money needs of the children in school...Seems like we have money to engage in flim flam, and the bigger issues but the "children are last" If a child leaves school today, its because of the pressure to even find schoold to be uplifting...What to do, just like health care...It should be a priority number 1 for the kids in school....Articulate endeavor rather than the "old addage" like when we went to school. These kids are the "new generation of machinery" but don't have to be treated as such...they aetrying to find theirself through the maze of technical risings"!
In many ways, easy access to technology can be seen as both a blessing and a curse for this young group of digital natives. These days, you'll often encounter teens having text message conversations or posting status updates while ignoring the very friends they're present with in the real world. Behavior like this could certainly send a message to the others that they are second priority to whomever else has engaged their friend's attention. That could easily lead to feelings of being "left out" as reported in this study.
And yet, at the same time, it's this very technology that's allowing the teens and young adults to feel like they have friends who know them and care about them.The issue is balancing that online life with the one out in the real world.
The question as to whether this sort of behavior is healthy is one best left to psychologists to analyze and report, but there's no doubt that at the very least, it is having an impact.
im really unlucky person at that earth still young but feel not a useful person unhappy one i dont know may be because all my friends cheat me may be im a sensitive person but really im chocked day after day by my real friends and recently i found my self in asylm just of my best friend who i trust and give some food with dangerous drugg and order some men to rape me but there is god im still ok..THERE WAS NO RAPE..NOW MY REAL FRIENDS ARE CATS ONLY CATS IM 26 YEARS NOT MARRIED AND MY HOPE TO MARRY SOMEONE FORIENGER NOT TO HAVE GOOD LIFE GOOD CONDITION BUT I WANT TO THROW ALL MY BAD AND BLACK MEMORIES BEHIND ME IN MY COUNTRY AND START A NEW LIFE AS A NEW REBORN WISH ME GOOD LUCK TO ACHEIVE THAT DREAM AND FIND MY SOLEMATE WHO WILL CARE OF ME AS IM CARRYINF OF MY SWEET CATS.STILL THERE IS HOPE STILL WANA CATCH IT AND I WILLLLLLLLLL
concerning friends in net,there is good and bad ones ,but it is here our role to choose which side we want;and when i believe in myselef that im a good type so there are good types as me using internet with someone far of them;OR near.and when i write my comments and read the others ones i feel good as im knowing u even that i have never talk to u but usings words to communicate i feel that im near u. God blesses u all amin
hahhahahaha.........
Surely the answer must be both and more?
For some, it is doubtless eroding (whether for good or bad) their ability to related to their atomic space peers. However, there's no evidence that it is making these people alienated, they are filling social needs in other ways. I'd also query if those who are having this "eroded" social networking in atomic space are the loners, the outsiders etc. who struggle in normal relationships anyway. They're not necessarily the truly isolated but the ones with a small number of friends and limited social skills. You might stereotype them as the geeks and nerds... I wonder if you went back to the time of our childhoods and looked at us (we'll pretend we're all well adjusted adults) what proportion of us were socially awkward. I'd be on that list for sure.
For others there's no appreciable erosion of their skills according to that research. But there are still opportunities to reach out of their geographic community into others. What's bad about that?
Sure, blame the technology. It's the lazy way out and it plays to the prejudices of the elderly that don't trust change. Which is probably why it's reported in the NYTimes - a throwback to last millennium and the need to spread news and comment slowly by print and paper and physical distribution rather than electronically.
i'm 16 and i agree that at times the internet can help with real life friendships but you have to realize that just because they say one thing doesn't mean that it's true. you never know what your getting into so i rearly add people on facebook exc unless i have met them before.
Xx-LoVe-xX
Allie XoX
It is a good idea to maintain a balance and practice all of one's healthy socialization skills in person as well as online! All are valid and necessary. As for the young adults out there, beware of unsavory types ready to take advantage of your too trusting and experimental stage of life as it may cost you yours. As for the person who is knocking parents, I doubt s/he even is one, so be careful about criticizing. As one who has been a teen, young adult, and parent of teens, being sensitive to those around you is always in good form.