How Real Are Facebook Friendships?
In an article for The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/02/how-real-are-facebook-friendships/384780/), Jacoba Urist writes about the importance of weak ties in one’s Facebook network. She discusses the structure of Facebook friendships and talks about how most of our Facebook friends are what Granovetter would describe as weak ties. To do this, she narrates a personal project by photographer Tanja Hollander, who went on a four-years mission to track down all of her 626 Facebook friends, to see who are her “real friends”. She makes it clear that these Facebook friends constitute of good freinds, just friends, decaying friendships (as she puts it), as well as acquaintances. She talks about how easy it was for Hollander to develop a good, more personal bond with her “weak” Facebook friends during her journey. We also see numerous Facebook posts asking the social circle for advices, suggestions, or to share thoughts and emotions. Urist says that Facebook has changed the way social circles behave and especially the role weak ties play in our daily lives. These days, we receive recommendations and advices from our “weak ties”. We share a lot of our thoughts and emotions online with our Facebook friends (majority of which are “weak ties”). Hence, Facebook, and other social network sites, have changed the way we interact with weak ties and the roles they play in our daily lives.
Throughout her article, Urist connects her discussion to Granovetter’s theory on weak ties and highlights the importance as well as the potential of weak ties that we all have. In the article, maintaining weak ties is deemed a beneficial act. This article agrees with what we have learned in class, i.e., weak ties can be an important bridge between two densely knit friends groups. The author also mentions that weak ties have a more dynamic position in a social structure, wherein these ties have higher probabbilities to move into disctinct social circles and provide access to new information, as in the case of Hollander’s travel. These points align with what we have discussed in class. The author cites Granovetter at many instances throughout her article to reinforce the role that weak ties play in our daily lives. Weak ties give us access to new information, new opportunities and bridge us to more people, who may potentially be helpful or meaningful in many ways. Hence, based Granovetter’s theory and our daily interaction in social circles, “the strength of weak ties” is one that should not be underestimated.