TRIAC Paragraph Assignment

Social networking platforms can be degrading for someone striving to develop a deeper, more authentic connection with an online acquaintance, as it often masks their true personality of the other person. The two essays The Limits of Friendship by Harvard graduate student Maria Konnikova and Unfollow by American blogger and formal staff writer Adrian Chen provide insight to how social media fosters the capability of embracing and becoming accumulated to the diverse lives of our peers. While Adrian Chen advocates that social media aids in self-expression and personal growth, Maria Konnikova argues that the connections one forms through social media are incomparable to the bonds we cultivate by being in direct presence with our peers. Throughout the article, my beliefs have aligned with one of Konnikova’s, who reinforces that having more friendships, especially through the media can frequently lead to difficulty managing and balancing them: “With social media, we can easily keep up with the lives and interests of far more than a hundred and fifty people. But without investing the face-to-face time, we lack deeper connections to them, and the time we invest in superficial relationships comes at the expense of more profound ones. We may widen our network to two, three, or four hundred people that we see as friends, not just acquaintances, but keeping up an actual friendship requires resources” (Konnikova 8). Based on this piece of evidence, Konnikova emphasizes that it must take a substantial time and amount of effort to uphold the relationships we create online. With this considered, it is evident that an individual can be quick to let go of a relationship they create with a peer online.