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Facebook?

 While it is true that Facebook facilitates friendships, most of my friendships are from a time in my life where there was no social media or even the internet. I have been very blessed in my life to have very few enemies and a large number of quality people in my life, that I made friends with in grade school, high school, in college and my everyday life. I can honestly say that I cherish all these relationships and friendships, and I wouldn’t be the person I am today without all these people! My life is filled with memories from each of my Facebook friends, most of these memories were created before we had the internet. 

It would appear to be an incredible blessing that every time I log into Facebook, that I would be instantly connected with all the memories and people, from my past that created the happy life that I call my own! It would appear to be a good thing that all my friends are a current part of my everyday life, but it can also be overwhelming to re-live even good events every day for the rest of my life, leaving not much room to live in the present and grow into the future! 

I can honestly say that my friends are super, we love each other, and even after all these years, there is no bad blood between us! What happens to dear friendships that are pitted against each other online because of religious or political reasons, that in the past were not public relationships, but private relationships? Our friendships started because of an authentic love and respect for our differences in real life, and survived throughout the years away from any public scrutiny or social media. 

Social media can take a once private relationship and possibly makes it vulnerable in a public setting. Yes, my friendships have managed to survive, but not without a lot of anxiety. Let’s say my life long friend has a different political or religious belief now, different from me and different from the past? What social media can do is build a virtual combat of beliefs between my good friend and me, where there was never any strife! Now that my friends beliefs are public domain, they will have millions of others with the same views supporting them, and vice versa. Public friendship isn’t the same as private friendship and social media can use the vulnerability of true friendships and can pit one good friend against another! 

Friendships that started healthy and lasted a lifetime even before the advent of internet technology, can become addictive and filled with strife as soon as they go public. We all love our friends and we want some of these friends indefinitely, but social media can take from humans the true joy of friendship, a joy that is everyone’s right and privilege. The only right thing would be if both good friends or all good friends agreed to take their friendships public. Facebook should have had a friendship mutual consent form, warning people of the dangers of making their friendships public or visible online to everyone. And then both parties freely agreeing to consent to friendship publicity. This is Mike. 


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