I think a balanced life includes real friends of course and also you can have internet ones too.
Sounds reasonable, but the bigger question is how you spend your time. 20h a week of screen time and 1h a week devoted to IRL friends? 10/10?
Wow, I'm glad I read this, I've been so naive to think the people I've chatted with online with for years aren't my friends. Even though I know everything about them, their hopes and dreams, their likes and dislikes, and we've helped each other through the good and the bad. Thank you, today I shall tell my "friends" they aren't my real friends since we don't interact in real life.
I know nothing about the quality of your particular relationships, but I do observe that Facebook's definition of "friend" - someone you correspond with via an electronic platform that sells ads and collects data about you to more effectively target their ads - is very different than what people understood it to be in the pre-internet era. Here are some questions to ask about your friendships: Would they trust you enough to lend you $20? Could you call them and get a ride to/from the hospital if needed? Would you recognize them if you encountered them? Nobody 20 years ago would call someone a good friend if they failed all 3 questions, but look how we've changed! As we can see, the threshold for calling someone a "friend" has been lowered, the meaning of the term has been cheapened, and Facebook's definition has replaced the earlier expectations. That said, if you've met people online and those interactions turned into a real-life attachment, then yes, I'd call such people friends.
Your ideas to cultivate real life friendships sound exhausting to me. I'm an introvert and I vastly prefer my social interactions to be online rather than in-person.
Media dependency or isolation might be the cause of many people's social anxiety, not the solution. Ever notice how when you don't do something for a long time (e.g. ride a bike, draw a portrait, visit a country where your language is not spoken, public speaking) it becomes more difficult and anxiety-provoking, but when you do something regularly it becomes easy? It's the same way with interpersonal interaction. As an INTJ (as you might have guessed from my OP), I too need downtime from people, but with a fully charged battery I can hang with the extroverts in an IRL setting for a couple hours. With practice, I hope to get this up to several hours. Many U.S. presidents have been introverts, so it can be done. I think it's the wrong approach to say that because something is difficult we should not do it. That sounds a lot like people who say they "need" an SUV to get them 2 miles to and from work, and yet they also need exercise. With a bit of practice, such people could condition themselves to walk that distance every day, but it seems so hard from the perspective of never having done it.
Not to mention, media / social media makes us less trusting of other people. People are more extreme in their online personas and, as with TV, isolated horror stories are shared from all across the world to terrorize us. The more time you spend on TV or social media, the more you expose yourself to the message that everyone is awful and the real world is shitty. That message corresponds nicely with the media corporations' goals to get us to spend more time on their platforms instead of getting out IRL.
At least please consider that social isolation might not be normal or healthy, even if it is easy.
Hilarious. This reminds me of the 90s-era laments about people using email instead of writing longhand letters anymore, like email was so impersonal and abbreviated that society was losing the value of those textural social connections by relying on electronic communications. The future is horrible!
Actually my complaint is about the present. Do you think people staring at their iPhones for five or six hours a day instead of interacting with humans is a positive development? Do you think the Baby Boomers' similar TV watching habits were a good thing? My suggestions are forward-looking and future oriented. I'm wondering how we could possibly continue these trends and become even more disconnected from reality than we are now. Is there even a future in that direction, or is a backlash inevitable as people become increasingly dissatisfied with life? MMM is itself a backlash against consumerism, which many of us once assumed to be the inevitable future. Problem is, there's no appealing future for us in that direction. Nor is it the good life to be psychologically dependent upon cell phones and social media corporations.
Off the top of my head, I've sent a book to someone I "met" here, had another over for dinner, and offered the use of my getaway place to two members, one of whom took me up on it and took great care of the place. I would be unlikely to recognize any of then if I passed them at the grocery store, but I believe my small, friendly acts have made a difference. Isn't that what friends do?
You made acquaintances through online connections. Nothing wrong with that, but I wouldn't call them friends in the pre-Facebook definition. Perhaps with cultivation, but not yet.
Clearly it is possible to spend too much time online but I would not argue that ANY time online is too much. A person just shouldn't replace IRL relationships with online relationships.
I would never give up the internet. I have learned so much over the years online. I do dislike that people choose social media rather than calling up their friends and inviting people to do things IRL.
I think the internet has its place, such as watching a video to see how to properly apply polyurethane, doing online banking, or shopping. It's the replacement of one's social life with social media - essentially multiplayer video games - that I think is harmful to both individuals and society. As I said, our definition of "friend" has eroded and millions of people now have no regular social connections outside the internet. People today think they can have friends
and not know their real names. This can't end well and it's no way to live.
Anyway, yeah I'm disagreeing with your argument based on the many communities I've been involved in that are pretty niche and that I've found no "in real life" peers. Perhaps I'd find em eventually if I pulled myself away from the internet but there aren't as many magazines or paper publications advertising meetups or conventions these days.
Books used to serve this function, but at a cost. Now internet information is much cheaper and easier to access. That said, misinformation is rampant and skepticism is scarce. How do you feel about online political bubbles, or forums where anyone with a dissenting opinion gets blocked? Look what happens when you type terms like "vaccines" or "Federal Reserve" or "aliens" into a search engine. Many pages of uninformed opinions or blatant misinformation is what I get, each with its own forum, Facebook "group", and moderation team devoted to keeping out messages from the real world that deviate from ideology. Is that a problem for bodybuilding or aquarium social media? Probably not. But it's also not the case that you are dependent upon an echo chamber of ameteurs for information. I used to participate in investment forums. Then one day I purchased a used college textbook on options and futures. I learned 10x more in 2 nights of reading that than I learned in years of bantering online with people who knew only as much as me or less.
Like anything else its all about balance.
Not everything is about balance. Smoking only one cigarette a day is bad for you. Eating McDonalds only once a week is bad for you. Shooting heroin just once... you get it. I use addictive, health destroying examples because I think we are dealing with an addictive, health destroying thing. The evidence is all around: cell phone zombies, rising rates of depression/suicide, etc. So how much of something bad is it reasonable to allow into our lives?