“Of course, the problems with friendship today are bigger than Facebook, MySpace, and other sites. Friendship was in trouble before they came along. They’ve just made the situation worse.
Deresiewicz correctly identifies the idea implicit in social networking, “that identity is reducible to information,” specifically our “consumer preferences.” And social networking is, for the most part, nothing more than sharing information. But data tell us little or nothing about another person’s character – the most important quality of a good friend. We only learn about that as we patiently share and hear one another’s stories.”
