1. 7 MYTHS OF SOCIAL MEDIA FRIENDSHIPS
Jed Diamond, Ph.D. has been a marriage and family counselor for the last
45 years. He is the author of 8 books, including Looking for Love in All the
Wrong Places, Male Menopause, The Irritable Male Syndrome, and Mr.
Mean: Saving Your Relationship from the Irritable Male Syndrome (May,
2010). He offers counseling to men, women, and couples in his office in
California or by phone with people throughout the U.S. and around the
world. To receive a Free E-book on Men’s Health and a free subscription to
Jed’s e-newsletter go to www.MenAlive.com. If you are looking for an
expert counselor to help with relationship issues, write Jed@MenAlive.com.
The rap on social media has been that it is superficial and the more time
people spend on-line, the less time they spend interacting in the “real”
world with “real” people. However, recent research indicates that this isn’t
true.
Myth #1: Social relationships are failing.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project’s 2007 report found that social
relationships and the sense of community are not “fading away in America”
but growing, although in non-traditional ways. Social affiliations are
increasingly shifting from extended family relationships and connections in
neighborhood-based organizations to “social networks,” bringing people of
like-minded interests that transcend geography.
Myth #2: Social media undermines our core relationships.
The Pew survey asked people about how their Internet involvement
affected both their core ties and significant ties. Core ties are with people
to whom one has close, intimate relationships, while significant ties were
defined as those with people to whom one is somewhat closely connected.
Contrary to the concerns of critics, the more contact individuals had by e-
mail, the more in-person and phone contact they had, suggesting that
“Americans are probably more in contact with members of their
communities and social networks than before the advent of the internet.”
Myth #3: Face-to-Face social networks are in decline.
A total of 32 percent of the respondents in the Pew survey reported that
engagement on the Internet increased the size of their social networks
while only 3 percent said it decreased them. Overall, Internet users boast
“somewhat larger social networks than non-users.
Myth #4: Internet networks undermine social capital.
Social capital is people helping one another. Traditionally this has been the
role of churches and fraternal organizations. Increased Internet use assists
users in maintaining existing social ties, often strengthening them, while
helping users forge new social ties. It has not, as some critics had
previously warned, been at the expense of significant social ties.
In fact, additional time spent online in community reduced the time spend
on unsocial activities like T.V.
Myth #5: Text messaging encourages superficial friendships.
The survey found that more frequent communications via Internet text
messaging encourages the desire to spend more time face-to-face.
Researchers found that the reason lies not only in the frequency of staying
in contact but also the nature of the medium and the way it is used.
Text messaging, they found, requires a more careful crafting of
communications than telephone or face-to-face communications and,
messaging is often done at home, often late at night, and therefore people
often share more intimate feelings.
Three in ten teens, for instance, say “that they are more honest when they
talk with friends on line.”
Myth #6: Internet interaction fosters false selves.

2. One of the main criticisms of Internet friendships is that they are false. We
can pretend to be anyone we want and as a result we may connect on-line,
but in a dishonest way. We’ve all heard the stories of sexual predators
pretending to be friends or older men pretending to be teen-age boys.
Although there is certainly an opportunity for unscrupulous people to be
able to hide behind their Internet Avatar, in the big scheme of the Internet,
that is rare. Years ago MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle suggested, on the
basis of her early pioneering work, that the relative anonymity afforded by
cyperspace encouraged people to experiment with other aspects of their
selves by taking on personas and roles that one might feel less comfortable
exploring in real-time social encounters.
Myth #7: Social media encourages people to lose connection with their
true selves.
Critics maintain that social media creates an artificial world where humans
disappear and mythic figures take their place. However, research
indicates that the medium may, in fact, help people to bring out their true
selves.
Laboratory experiments conducted by social scientist Katelyn McKenna
and her colleagues have shown that “the relative anonymity of Internet
interactions greatly reduces the risks” of personal disclosures, “especially
about intimate aspects of the self, because one can share one’s inner
beliefs and emotional reactions with much less fear of disapproval and
sanction.”
McKenna, a New York University psychology professor, concluded:
“The more people express facets of the self on the Internet that they
cannot or do not express in other areas of life, the more likely they are to
form strong attachments to those they meet on the Internet.”
What do you think? Have your friendships improved or deteriorated since
getting involved in social media? I look forward to your responses. Note
them here or connect with me on my website at www.MenAlive.com. I’m
indebted to Jeremy Rifkin for information in this article and described in his
book, The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a
World in Crisis.