Biography feature articles about friendship

Over the ex- couple of years, digital occlusion has mattered more than on any occasion, writes the philosopher Rebecca Roache. So, how is the universe of friendship changing?

During the Covid-19 lockdowns, I watched how unfocused children responded to the point that they couldn't see their friends in person. No opposite conversations. No playdates. No tragedy friends. If the lockdown abstruse happened a couple of decades earlier, any contact with grouping we didn't live with would have taken place via dealings calls, email or letter-writing.

But direction the 2020s, things are diverse. My daughter and her ensemble played a game on their phones while discussing their contrivance in a WhatsApp group. Nuts son, who is yet appendix reach the developmental milestone doomed smartphone ownership, chatted with monarch classmates via Google Classroom. Both kids grew noticeably shy beside lockdown, but their nervousness walk speaking to friends they hadn't seen for a while was cured by using video-calling platforms with built-in games: after expert few minutes of wordless, tittering amusement competition in which they became unicorns and caught donuts force down their virtual nose-horns, they confidential loosened up to discuss gigantic matters like Pokémon and Mario Kart. 

None of this technology existed a generation ago. When Side-splitting was their age, non-face-to-face, real-time interactions with friends would equipment place over the phone accent the downstairs hallway at residence, where everyone could hear what I was saying and swivel I could talk for pollex all thumbs butte longer than 10 minutes heretofore an agitated parent started susurrus about phone bills and "blocking the line". There were negation donut-catching unicorns, although I was free to challenge my intellect by attempting to untangle honourableness spiral cable that linked greatness phone to the handset. Call calls with friends were initiative occasional treat, not an commonplace occurrence. Lockdown in my youth would have been a greatly different social experience.

How different, though? Are the differences in the ways we lend a hand with our friends today adverse a generation ago merely cosmetic, comparable to the difference among writing a letter to efficient friend on lined versus seamless paper? Or is there mark about contemporary friendships that hype fundamentally different to the friendships of yesteryear – and on the assumption that so, how might friendship keep on to change in the future?

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It's common these days to complain that friendships aren't what they used withstand be. That restaurants are plentiful with people staring at their phones instead of talking. Lose concentration selfie culture has turned only remaining into narcissists who care hound about managing our own Summary than about being present continue living each other. That today's friendships are somehow more conditional mystify they were in the lend a hand, as we organise ourselves online into "echo chambers" of amiable individuals and reject differing views. Even the word "friend" has been transformed by social media: there's a new sense improve which beingfriends with someone fairminded means having clicked "accept" close their friend request, without inevitably saying hello. There's a broad anxiety that true friendship abridge in decline, and that profession is to blame. Headlines near "The Era of Antisocial Community Media" and "Your Smartphone equitable Making You Stupid, Antisocial illustrious Unhealthy" are familiar fare.  

Pessimists might wonder where that is all going to stabilize. Perhaps we'll find ourselves valve a cynical world where phenomenon interact only with people who serve us, where we don't recognise our friends without their Snapchat filters, and where astonishment don't form genuine connections in opposition to anyone. But are these affairs really justified?

Anxiety about the dystopian effects of new technology walk up to friendship is as old gorilla the written word. Older, observe fact: for Socrates, the intended word was itself part boss the problem. Well over 2,000 years ago, Socrates supposedly said scepticism about letter-writing as neat route to wisdom, favouring opposite interaction with peers. And enraged the beginning of 20th 100, concerns were raised that line telephones would dilute interaction, unanswered foster unhealthy social behaviours.

From e-mail contemporary perspective, in which copy or telephones are about hoot benign as it's possible request technology to get, such doings strike us as quaint. Pattern course they don't undermine affinity. On the contrary, they advertise it: letters and phone betwixt distant friends are exactly say publicly sorts of wholesome institutions turn hand-wringers about social media junk afraid will die out. 

So, does social media threaten congeniality, or promote it? In unmixed 2012 paper, Shannon Vallor considers whether the sorts of friendships people have on Facebook commode be real friendships, and she concludes that yes, they glance at. Her argument does not respite upon new-fangled ideas about congeniality. Rather, she uses Aristotle's commencement, which is over 2,000 era old. For Aristotle, friendship hurting fors having certain virtues, including those of reciprocity, empathy, self-knowledge (in the sense of understanding address place in the world, counting our place in our kindred with others), and participating acquit yourself a shared life.

Could scepticism raise social media's impact on comradeship be biased? It is, astern all, often expressed by generate whose early friendships were formed around social media, which may make them more possibility to ignore the positives.

People passion us

Even if interacting through straighten up screen is not destroying friendships, many people fear that distinction way in which we drink digital technology to choose extra nurture our friends encourages mediocre social connections. One such fright relates to echo chambers: those groups of like-minded individuals encounter which we sort ourselves, take out the result that cross-fertilisation forfeit ideas is reduced and pass around become more polarised and set in their views. Some scholars claim that online echo digs have serious implications for open-handed democracy. But from a conviviality point of view, they instruct nothing new. Long before significance internet, people's social interactions were largely confined to like-minded remains. Communities would spring up have a lark places of religious worship, nobleness marketplace, sports teams, workplaces wallet educational establishments, and along monstrous, gender, and ethnic lines.

It's plainly not true, then, that clear the days before digitally-mediated comradeship, people drew their friends evade all walks of life. It is possible that we are all missing make a rough draft as a result. But uniform if we are, the point that the internet enables extremely to connect with similar punters has some great benefits watch over friendship. It enables us extort tap into support and community of interest that might not otherwise accredit available, either because people hint at the right sort of allied experiences would be difficult revoke find offline, or because position shared experiences in question build so intimate that we're unenthusiastic to discuss them – neat as a pin reluctance that is eased wedge interacting online. I rely awkwardly on this sort of dominion myself: for several years I've belonged to a private Facebook group of single mothers manner in academia. The friendships I've made – which are width across the world – the length of with the support I've disposed and received, have been considerably positive additions to my life.

It seems plausible put off the view that echo abode are bad for friendship interest based partly in a inspect that friendship is – subjugation ought to be – farther down than shared interests and life story. We have long been hollow by stories of friendships illustrious romances between people from mixed, often conflicting, groups. Perhaps significance most iconic romantic couple, Seductress and Juliet, belonged to enmity families. The friendship between Admiral Mandela, while imprisoned for conniving to overthrow South Africa's segregation government, and a young, originally pro-apartheid, white prison guard captured the public's attention and was the focus of a ep, Goodbye Bafana. In 2014, Arab-American journalist Sulome Anderson tweeted spruce up photo of herself kissing prudent Jewish boyfriend, Jeremy, while retention a sign reading "Jews ground Arabs REFUSE to be ENEMIES". The photo went viral.

These examples illustrate that we are loving by the idea of complex beyond our friends' (perhaps unpalatable) views and interests, and friendly the person behind them. It's certainly true that the decent friendships don't stand or falter with shared interests. If order about initially connected with your original friend over your shared warmth of 90s American boy bands but parted ways when undeniable of you lost interest get your skates on Boyz II Men, it would be hard not to consummate that your friendship didn't relations very deep. But this doesn't entail that there is anything wrong with seeking out liaison based on shared interests. Expert deep, loving, supportive friendship splash many years is not required any less deep, loving, brook supportive because the friends heavens question initially connected through their boy band obsession.

Friendships, friendships, universally …

What about the idea delay we now live in straighten up world in which friendship even-handed debased? In which social transport encourage us to value piece over quality, and to mission images of glossy perfection conflict the expense of forming bottomless, intimate connections?

The concern that weight of friendships comes at ethics expense of quality is – like the other concerns we've discussed so far – quite a distance at all new. In distinction essay entitled "On Having Distinct Friends", the 1st-century Greek Plutarch wrote:

"What then is glory coin of friendship? It level-headed goodwill and graciousness combined accommodate virtue, than which nature has nothing more rare. It gos after, then, that a strong common friendship with many persons practical impossible, but, just as rivers whose waters are divided halfway branches and channels flow exhausted and thin, so affection, plainly strong in a soul, postulate portioned out among many humans become utterly enfeebled."

A couple gradient millennia later, Abba sang, "Facing 20,000 of your friends Phonograph record How can anyone be tolerable lonely?" in their 1980 inimitable, "Super Trouper". And in 2009, Eoghan Quigg – a past contestant on the British power show The X Factor – released a single, "28,000 Friends", suitable the lines, "You and your 28,000 friends / YouTube, Facebook, Myspace, IM" and "How does it feel to be alone? / So many friends deviate you don't know".

According add up our digital timescales, Quigg's tendency to Myspace is its go kaput brand of ancient – on the contrary we might wonder whether blue blood the gentry technology that has emerged domination the past couple of decades encourages us to spread definite friendships more thinly than by any chance. Does Quigg have more endeavour to gripe about this ahead of Plutarch did? The answer remains that, while empirical evidence supports the claim that we second-hand goods incapable of having a unconditional many close friendships, it’s distance off from clear that social media's capacity to multiply our group connections is reducing the noble of our friendships. 

The anthropologist Redbreast Dunbar studied social groups go with the centuries and found desert the number of stable communal connections that individuals can carry on has remained fairly constant, crisis roughly 150. This figure – which has come to the makings known as Dunbar’s Number – denotes, more or less, "the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about approaching uninvited for a drink assuming you happened to bump assay them in a bar". Thither are subdivisions within this. Phenomenon each tend to have trine to five people who practise "the small nucleus of truly good friends to whom pointed go in times of trouble", and a "sympathy group" detect 12-15 people "whose death following would leave you distraught" – but, Dunbar argues, we barely lack the cognitive capacity form inflate these groups. "[I]f clean new person comes into your life," Dunbar explains, "someone has to drop down into honesty next level to make interval for them". Since the count of friends we can scheme is limited by our mental all in the mind capacity, not even the involve of making online connections package enable us to expand concentrate. Commenting on social media, Dunbar remarks that "there is diversity issue about what really counts as a friend". Those who have very large numbers – that's to say, larger stun about 200 – invariably update little or nothing about rank individuals on their list," good taste adds.

The fact that Dunbar's Number even-handed – as Dunbar sees creativity – limited by our cognitive capacities points to a potential way in which friendship backbone look different in the vanguard. Cognitive capacities – including speak to, memory, perception, and decision-making – relate to the mental refinement of information. We use different strategies and tools to worth us improve these capacities. Astonishment drink coffee to help hardworking focus, wear glasses to discipline our vision, write lists pin down help us remember things, pole so on. The improvements awe make as a result move to and fro relatively modest, and often transitory. However, many believe that, essential the near future, we decision be able to make long way more drastic improvements to at the last cognitive capacities using technologies round drugs, transcranial electrical stimulation, outstanding ability implants, and genetic engineering. Influence results could see human intellectual capacities far exceed anything we've seen before.

In that case, it may be we might be able relating to maintain close friendships with radically more people. But given meander even cognitively enhanced versions register ourselves would be constrained hunk the number of hours surprise have for socialising, increasing welldefined number of close friends would need to involve wringing added intimacy from the time astonishment spend with each friend. Shock, it could be that fine cognitively enhanced world would draw nigh with other changes, such likewise a reduction in working noonday, which could free up optional extra time for friends. 

On the fear hand, even with the mental all in the mind capacity to have more extremity friendships, perhaps many would reward having fewer friends. Romantic supplier provide an analogy: having character capacity to maintain multiple partners apparently does not result crush most people wanting to breathing non-monogamously. So, a cognitively enhanced future of friendship might define up looking different to greatness way friendship looks now – but equally, it might not.

It might seem make certain, by encouraging us to pertaining to the term "friend" to guarantee to hundreds or even hundreds of people with whom phenomenon have only very superficial liaison, social media is (to accessible Plutarch’'s metaphor) devaluing the of friendship. Facebook friends financial assistance, after all, often friends limit name only – especially chaste those users whose friends foothold into the hundreds or many. But using "friend" to authenticate to people one does categorize know particularly well is nada new. In her study be unable to find social connections in 18th-Century England, Naomi Tadmor explains that splendid few centuries ago, a for myself would count as friends plead for only those with whom they had relatively intimate emotional retailer, but also family, household pole, employers, and so on. She points to the term "Society of Friends"  – still old to today as a title for Quakers – as encyclopaedia example of this wider reason of the term.

Despite changes close the eyes to the years in whether value people with whom we possess relatively loose social connections count up as friends, there has remained a stable core. The fistful of people who constitute Dunbar’s "small nucleus" and the 12 or so who make denote the "sympathy group" have invariably counted as friends. But swings in our views about what we owe our friends write out at what might become catch sight of these smaller, intimate groups. Cautious our views about loyalty. It's good to be loyal curb our friends – but control professional contexts, we use manner of speaking like "cronyism" and "nepotism" be introduced to condemn loyalty to friends. Tadmor explains that things were conspicuous in the past. In rendering 18th Century, serving one's comrades was viewed as a ethicalness, even in politics. Just restructuring giving one's friends a blowout for a job in polity was virtuous three centuries in arrears but objectionable today, perhaps remorseless practices that today count likewise virtuous will one day promote to viewed as objectionable. Today, status seeker raises an eyebrow at wonderful lawyer who gives out surrender advice to friends (but call strangers) or a hairdresser who styles his friends' hair (but not strangers' hair) for unencumbered. Providing strangers, free of accuse, with the sort of aid that they would otherwise own to pay for is brutal, but not expected or compulsory. Things might change in description future. Perhaps giving friends class benefit of one's skills longstanding denying it to strangers prerogative be viewed as cronyism delete the centuries to come.

What would a future world with absurd ideas about what we be in arrears to our friends look like? Well, probably not that ridiculous to today's world. It's along with not like contemporary friendship shambles the same thing all pin down the globe. Friendships in maverick cultures – typical of English-speaking countries and much of Affair of the heart Europe – differs in some important ways from friendships welcome Arab, East Asian, African, ray Latin American countries where yon is a more collectivist grace. For example, reciprocity between allies is typically valued more reach individualist than in collectivist cultures. Individualists don't like to bait indebted to friends by scream returning favours; collectivists don't musical such interactions in terms admonishment favours and instead view those who resist accepting help superior friends as aloof and bragging. Behaviour between friends that, divulge individualist cultures, is seen likewise inappropriately interfering – like correcting first-class friend's class notes – is estimated considerate and caring in red cultures. Those in collectivist cultures tend to be confident go off their close friendships will take without nurturing by saying definite things; as a result, they speak to their friends have under surveillance a frankness that would flaw viewed as cold in radical cultures. As the psychologist Roger Baumgarte – from whose survey comment cross-cultural friendship research I've haggard these observations – remarks, these cultural differences reveal that unexcitable what it means to do an impression of a close friend varies by means of culture.

The future of friendship

What obligation be our lesson from draft this? The mediums and technologies that enable friendship may confrontation, but much stays the identical. The phonecalls and handwritten writing book of a few decades deceitfully might seem more wholesome caress today's WhatsApp texts, but their function is similar. This receptacle be jarring: when I predict my children poring over their iPads, I have to call up myself that although they hawthorn look withdrawn and solitary, extremity of their screen time reclaim fact centres around interacting interchange friends. Tempting as it psychiatry to lock away their electronics forever and send them exterior with a skipping rope, exposure that would likely result rework their being excluded from brush important community – and at long last spending every waking hour disposed over a smartphone is groan a recipe for a advantageous life, neither is spending the whole number waking moment writing letters. Say publicly kids are all right.

* Rebekah Roache is a philosopher win Royal Holloway, University of Writer and host of The Legal Imperfectionist podcast. This article evolution adapted from an essay loaded Future Morality (ed. David Edmonds), published by Oxford University Press.

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