In her article Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism, Christine Rosen asks: “Does this technology, with its constant demands to collect (friends and status), and perform (by marketing ourselves), in some ways undermine our ability to attain what it promises—a surer sense of who we are and where we belong?” I would argue, especially in light of the Nicomachean Ethics, that FaceBook and MySpace do undermine our “sense of who we are and where we belong.” What kind of friendships come through these services? Most of the friends on my FaceBook page are people I rarely, if ever see; others are inhabitants of my dorm whom I never talk to, but which FaceBook claims I have “friended.” Aristotle writes: “Those who are quick to show signs of friendship to one another are not really friends, though they wish to be; they are not true friends unless they are worthy of [each others’] affection and know this to be true. The wish to be friends can come about quickly, but friendship cannot.” The kinds of friendship that come about through social networks like FaceBook and MySpace don’t really fall under any of categories of Aristotle, since they seem more like acknowledgments of other people’s existence than anything else. At a great stretch, one might describe them as the kinds of friendships which Aristotle says are based on pleasure. They are most certainly not “the perfect form of friendship...between good men who are alike in excellence or virtue.”
It seems to me that the term “friend” in the case of social networking, has been misapplied, since most of the friends aren’t really friends. At most, they are people whose company is enjoyable, but they do not complement, support, and better each other the way true friendship does. I think that they are more like acquaintances. Certainly, a few of my good friends are my “friends” on FaceBook. Then again, there are the nine or so friend requests from people I’ve never met in my entire life, or from people I dislike. They are “called ‘friends,’ as children are ‘friends’ with one another.” Thus, I would say that social networking websites and services have devalued friendship in that they have misapplied. We keep using the word, but it doesn’t really mean what we think it means.