Being Connected: Friendships and Social Interactions

Abstract

What is a “friend”? Through the evolution of the World Wide Web, several authors have argued that our understandings about what constitutes friendship and who we consider to be our “friends” has changed. This transformation has, to a certain degree, emerged as a result of the notion of “friending” on social networking and social media platforms such as Facebook; but online friendships or, at the very least, online social interactions that have personal meaning actually existed long before the emergence of the social networking and social media applications or “apps” we use today. For example, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and Internet provider chat rooms (such as those offered by AOL) led the way in connecting individuals from minority groups with one another, to build online networks and actual offline communities of support (Thomas, 2002).