The idea that social media can do this is the central conceit of facebook. A friendship maintained solely because of an entry in a database is not the same as one driven by the memories of the participants. You are not extending your ability to make friends. You are engaging in something fundamentally different from friendship.
Look at the effects--- facebook depresses people, but meeting real people in real life makes us happy. You will say you need facebook to know where the next party is and meet those people, but that's like saying you need to smoke to meet people at bars.
Friendship isn't a token. It's a continued process of communication and exchange. You are not extending your capacity for friendship by submitting your life details to a social network.
> A friendship maintained solely because of an entry in a database is not the same as one driven by the memories of the participants.
First of all, Facebook isn't about having friendships "maintained solely because of an entry in a database". There are other social networks for that (e.g. Twitter, Instagram, etc.). Facebook is designed to mirror your real-life social network (and the company itself actively pushes against deviating too much from that use). It's a tool that helps you maintain existing frienships, keep weak ties and incubate them if needed so that they may grow to real friendships. But the difference between "weak ties" and "actual friends" is very much dependent on your off-line activity.
> You are not extending your ability to make friends.
That's why I corrected myself to shift the focus on keeping friendships. Because that's what Facebook really is - a self-updating address book that lets you pull regular updates on what people you know are doing. It doesn't really help you make friends out of strangers. But it helps tremendously in keeping ties to people you know.
> You are engaging in something fundamentally different from friendship.
True, but I'd say it's something more. It's an enhancement, an additional aspect. At least that's how it works for my (real-life) friends and me.
> Look at the effects--- facebook depresses people, but meeting real people in real life makes us happy.
This I strongly disagree with, because for me it's the other way around! I'm an introvert[0], I find too much face-to-face interaction depressing and even irritating. But I do get a lot of fun from talking with people on-line, especially in an async mode. So e-mail, Facebook and Hacker News are a big win for me.
> You will say you need facebook to know where the next party is and meet those people, but that's like saying you need to smoke to meet people at bars.
It's all context-dependent. People who use Facebook to communicate will organize parties by starting events on Facebook. People who use other means of communication will utilize those to organize the same parties. When you see someone saying that they need Facebook to be aware of social gatherings, it only means that they and their friends are all prefering Facebook as a tool for coordinating those gatherings. It's a lock-in effect, true, but it doesn't mean its bad.
> Friendship isn't a token. It's a continued process of communication and exchange.
Indeed. And Facebook is an awesome communication and exchange tool that works perfectly for a great subset of population.
[0] - people don't believe me because I like to give public talks and have pretty well-developed social skills, but that only means they don't understand what being an introvert means; I love people, but in small doses, with enough time off to recharge. See [1] for explanation.
