Talk:Elizabeth Pratt

Mike Wojan's Comment

First of all, I couldn't agree more about the definition of friendship changing over time. I still look at about 10 people as my true childhood friends that used to come over on the weekends and go on vacations with my family. It's pretty funny how much "friendship" changes over time, especially with the use of social media. You make a great point that now you can befriend someone you haven't technically even met.

Another interesting point that you touched on is the advantage of having a large friend base on Facebook. Until reading this, I've always looked at Facebook profiles with thousands of friends as examples of people that have a plethora of connections, but not friends, and that it is more of a status symbol than anything. However, now I see that you're using your friend count as a professional database that you can draw from down the road and use to your advantage. After high school, I went through and removed most of the people I no longer talked to, but I didn't consider how this could change my online identity now and in the future.

Your last point that I really relate to was regarding the representation of important aspects of friendship. Facebook (hopefully) doesn't keep track of text messages, phone calls, etc. which are all so integral to my continued friendship with people from home. Social media definitely only shows one side of a person without credit to everything that goes on behind the scenes/offline. You did a great job explaining this and using it to prove your point about the value of friends on the internet.