The article "Friends With Benefits: Do Facebook Friends Provide the Same Support as Those in Real Life?" by Kate Dailey. Published by Newsweek June 15,2009.
This article is about the author explaining the difference between being friends with people on Facebook and being friends with somebody in person and talking to them face-to-face. In the article, the author mentions that Facebook might be the perfect venue for tragic news. What she means by this, is that when somebody you may not know very well posts something tragic such as a death in the family or a family dog dying, people will feel the need to post sympathetic things to the person on their status and that is the only way you would know about it, is when they post it. The author also mentions that when you have 700 or more friends on Facebook, your less likely to actually talk to every "friend" you added to your friends list. According to the article Facebook doesn't make anybody a better friend, it just makes them more of an acquaintance because there just another person who knows your business when maybe you really didn't want them too because you don't know them very well. According to Rebecca G. Adams who is a professor at the University of North Carolina, in real life, friendships don't have to be equal or close and we know from research that friendships aren't as voluntary as they seem.
I can see why the author said what she said because I've noticed the things she mentioned in her article. I have over 685 Facebook friends, some of them being people I had classes with in high school and some that I played sports with over the years and they just linger on my friends list as people to have. I guess I am part of those people who post whatever I want on my statuses and enjoy the amount of "likes" on a certain post because it's the attention people are bringing to the one status they saw on there news feed Over all, I do agree with the author that Facebook doesn't always make people better friends but more acquaintances than we were before when we were just two people passing each other in the school hallways.
I agree I have around the same amount of friends and a lot of them are aquatics from high school and sports. When I post something on Facebook it is normally about school and everyday life. I’m not one of those people that would post something that is tragic right away. I do agree with the author when he said that Facebook doesn’t make people better friends but more acquaintances.
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