I am quite disturbed by what is really meant by “friend” on facebook and how teenagers might perceive this meaning. It is quite normal to receive a request from someone who you don’t know to add him/her as a “friend”. We might accept their request if we think they look cool or fun but the question is “are they really our friends??”. It seems to me that there are two different definitions to who could be an “online” friend and a “real” friend in life.
I remember when I was at school I used to introduce anyone to my parents as my “friend”. This is when my dad taught me what it really meant and when I should use it. Did we forget the saying “A friend in need is a friend indeed”?… Well, I don’t think this is what a “Facebook” friend really mean.
It seems that the meaning of this beautiful word has been lost in the cyberspace …
Hi! You have risen an important question over there. It is true that the meaning of “friend” in cyberspace is not at least what we mean in real life. The word friends obviously is used in Facebook for adding new people in order to develop a friendship, otherwise do you have another idea of what we would call the ones we would like to add in our page? Should we just call them: others or facebookers? Well as you can see it is quite strange to use such words. The term friend here makes it easier to add other people in our pages and make them sound a little bit more like our friends than strangers who are curious about who we are …
By: emeraja on May 29, 2008
at 3:42 pm
Well, I have seen an application on Facebook called “Are you interested?” so this could be a better idea. When I want to send a request to someone to add me as a friend however I don’t know them, they could receive a notification saying that someone is interested in you and he/she is a potential friend. Then when they get to know me better and think that we can build a friendship then at this stage they could “add” me to their list of frineds.
By: ozzy070 on May 29, 2008
at 9:33 pm
I think the cyberspace has come with its own language, and where it uses concepts such as “friend”, it cann’t be in the same sense as we have always used such words. It could mean some one of social networking group interests,or some one connected to people one knows through such sites.
By: Samuel Byamugisha Kamanzi on July 10, 2008
at 11:03 am
I agree with you but this meaning is also changing as a cultural concept and young adults and teenagers who use Facebook will absorb it as it is currently presented. Therefore, this will have an impact on how they will use this term in real life away from the cyberspace…
By: ozzy070 on July 10, 2008
at 12:04 pm