Is Social Media A Safe Place To Make Friends?
Social media is a relatively safe place to interact with others due to its openness , but it is not a safe place to make friends. The idea of social interactions and making friends has been confused. If the line between friendship and social interactions are not clearly defined, safety and privacy as well as emotions are violated.
We rely on social media to make friends, forgetting the most important aspect of friendship, which is the test of a person’s character. Social media should be used to enhance friendship and to maintain them. Social media makes us spend more time trying to communicate with people far away from us than spending time with the people around us. Words don’t build friendship, actions do.
Many social media users are oblivious to the fact that social media is open to all: good, weird, sinister and socially awkward personalities whose philosophies don’t tally with ours.
Sometime ago, Yahoo News carried a news report of a woman who tried to get into the home of a man she met online through his chimney. She got stuck in the chimney and must have cried out for help, until the firemen pulled her out of the chimney. According to this news report , the man admitted having gone out with her in a casual manner a few times and never alluded to any relationship of a sentimental nature. This scenario draws one sound conclusion: that the man didn’t know that the lady he went on a casual date with may have some psychological problems, but may have had the appearance of a mentally stable person.
When people confuse what is sacred like friendship, with social interaction, friendships are bound to be taken lightly and easily broken. If that happens, Is it social media that is unsafe? I think not. Is social media bad then? No.
What is unclear is our definition of friendship and social interactions and the sooner we get these two clearly defined, the better and more effective our use of social media will be. Imagine how much heartbreak and scandals would be avoided if social media users valued friendship enough not to go looking for it in the wrong places.
How can we know if the person we are making “friends” with on the other side of the globe is really a banker and not an ex-convict? How are we sure that “friends” made on social media look just like they do in pictures they have sent and that those pictures were not taken from Google images?.
Friendship is when you have proof of the person’s character over time, without the test of character, there is no friendship.
If social media doesn’t give the platform for a person’s character to be tested, then it is not a safe place to make friends.
Written by: Naa Akuye Addy.
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