Hi5, a meeting point for what and for whom?
July 19, 2008 at 2:04 pm (social networking) (friend request, friendship, Hi5, social networking)
Lately I signed in my Hi5 account. I was curious to see whether I had any new notifications. Surprisingly I did have many, regarding friend requests. I had about 10 requests from totally unknown people asking from me to become friends so as we can get to know a little bit more with each other. This is quite natural these days since lots of people with the rise of internet seek to socialise through social networks such as Hi5. However the strange part was that the requests had been made from children aged from 12 to 16 years old. Honestly, tell me, what kind of relation or friendship can be developed from people who belong to such different generations? What kind of discussions can we have?
In an attempt to understand their logic of asking me to become their friend I visited their pages. There I discovered lots of colours, amazing pictures, numerous applications and hundreds of posts written by their friends and from themselves. So, trying to see how they reached me and whether we had any common friends I saw their friends. But I quickly discovered that they had made hundreds of friends from all over the world and from any age rank.
I guess that this is a new tendency between friends, to make as many friends as possible. The one with the greater number of friends is the coolest and the greatest, the ‘leader’. So, I feel that although Internet has brought people together, is also bringing them apart. In the seek of making friends and searching people we forget our true friends and neglect them. The term friendship, as I have known it till today, is going to be distorted. We are going to hang out around with unknown people, through the screen of our computers, and we are going to feel happy and satisfied with this, because lots of people today find it difficult to spend their time the way they used to in making friends.
