Everyone knows everyone! But are we really friends?
Did you know that your friend’s uncle’s brother’s neighbor might be friends with Donald Trump? The idea that everyone knows everyone is known as the six degrees of separation theory. Although we have an estimate of 7.9 billion people in the world today, the fact that everyone is accessing the internet made us an interconnected world.
In fact, Cornell itself is a really diverse school. We have people coming from all parts of the world, from Asia to Africa, from Australia to Ireland. Imagine linking these people up then linking to their family back in their home country, we are already halfway through linking the entire world together!
I remember before coming to campus, everyone followed everyone on social media, especially Instagram. Just by adding ‘Cornell’25’ on your Instagram bio, 100+ people will follow you the next day! And with the Instagram algorithm which shows your common followers with someone, it made it more obvious that everyone is interconnected. Thus, it is undeniable that we are more interconnected than decades ago. However, the sad reality is, many people you follow online, might not be what you call ‘genuine’ friends. You might know everything about their life, what they like to eat, what they dress every day, but you won’t know the problems they face every day, such as how hard school work is or how bad dining hall food is. You even know their names, their family members, and their birthdays, but when you walk past them, you never once said hi.
This is one of the issues with the interconnected age we are living in. Everyone seems to be more interconnected with the presence of the internet, yet, as everyone is too glued to finding out the lives of their ‘superficial’ friend on social media, they gave up the chance to socialize with people in real life.
Hopefully, after 4 years of college, everyone will really know everyone else. Theoretically, this works as Triadic Closure states that if two people in the social network have a friend in common, then there is an increased likelihood that all 3 of them will become friends. Hence, the triangle of friends will slowly expand out into the larger school community. But in reality, will it work? Let’s wait and see!
Source:
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/the-first-decade-has-the-internet-brought-us-together-or-driven-us-apart-1835994.html