In this post, we reflect on something that perhaps we should all reflect on: What do the terms ‘friends’, ‘friendship’ and the action ‘being friendly’ means to us, others and in our social worlds! An important reflection, especially before we add people to our FB profile; share or tag photos with/of them; email, text, call or hang out with them or better yet … invite them to be part of our world! It’s funny, because these terms are not new, they are not words we are unfamiliar with. However their meaning is so ever fluid today, more than ever before … as our digital space evolves, as it merges more with our non-digital world as we transverse spaces, so does the language and narrative we use to think and discuss ‘friends’!

If someone ‘adds’ you on Facebook, are they really your friend? What are the elements that we association with being a friend and why add someone, especially someone we might not really know? Is this changing what we mean by the term ‘friend’ or just changing how we interact with people who ‘could’ be our friends! So let’s espouse …

Having Friends – Being Friendly – Developing Friendships!

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term ‘friend’ as:

1. A person whom one knows, likes, and trusts.
2. A person whom one knows; an acquaintance.
3. A person with whom one is allied in a struggle or cause; a comrade.
4. One who supports, sympathizes with, or patronizes a group, cause, or movement

In history … A friend is a lover, literally. The relationship between Latin amcus “friend” and am “I love” is clear, as is the relationship between Greek philos “friend” and phile “I love.” In English, though, we have to go back a millennium before we see the verb related to friend. At that time, frond, the Old English word for “friend,” was simply the present participle of the verb fron, “to love.” The Germanic root behind this verb is *fr-, which meant “to like, love, be friendly to.” Closely linked to these concepts is that of “peace,” and in fact Germanic made a noun from this root, *frithu-, meaning exactly that. Ultimately descended from this noun are the personal names Frederick, “peaceful ruler,” and Siegfried, “victory peace.” The root also shows up in the name of the Germanic deity Frigg, the goddess of love, who lives on today in the word Friday, “day of Frigg,” from an ancient translation of Latin Veneris dis, “day of Venus.”

So, from the above we can see characteristics and terms such as: “to know, knowledge of, to like, trust, love, is allied to, supportive of, sympathize with, peaceful, friendly to, lover of, someone I love” … a number for wonderful, deep and emotive words that create a psychological boundary around what is a ‘friend’ is, ‘how friends behave’ and ‘our relationship with them’…

But what about in digital social networks, such as on Facebook, where the term ‘friend’ is used alot? Blurring the lines between connectivity and deep emotive social bonds. Are we connecting to ‘have friends’; ‘develop friendships‘ or are we just ‘being friendly‘ by adding people we have just met, chatted to, shared an experience and thought/hope they might become part of intimate circle of people who are our currently our friends. People who we might work with, grew up with or have known forever – such as family … in this the term ‘friends‘ and the activity of ‘being friendly‘ is about developing social bonds. In this we evolve from weak ties to deeper stronger ties with people … developed based on our level and type of emotive connectedness with them – similar values, loves, hates, opinions … but at it’s core development of mutual trust, respect and … love!

Connectivity – Connections – Connectedness

So from this it is important to distinguish between a number of other terms cognisiant with and used to describe the digital media space … ‘having connectivity’, ‘adding connections’ and ‘developing connectedness’. The differential between these terms is about the extent or evolution from the technical bonds to the emotive social bonds between users of a system (i.e., nodes in a network) and the technical infrastructure that can and does connect them. In this sense,

• ‘having connectivity’ = is the ability and functionality of a digital system to ‘connect’ nodes in a networks – be it people, computers or data points … i.e., being connected to the Internet gives you connectivity!
• ‘add connections’ = is the number and quality of nodes that exist in a complex system – be it people, computers or data points’… i.e., being on Facebook and adding friends gives you connections!
• ‘developing connectedness’ = is the emotive social bonds between nodes in a network – and in this essence is more about human social bonds and social capital that you develop… i.e., engaging in dialogue and conversation with friends through Facebook gives you connectedness!

So in essence, ‘adding a friend’, ‘having friends‘, and ‘developing friendships’ are not one in the same – be it in an offline space such as at work or university or an online digital space such as Facebook. Connectivity through social networks most certainly might provide the digital opportunity for the latter to occur, however it is the deep rich social bonds and thus ‘connectedness’ between ‘friends’ in a network, that makes true, deep and lasting ‘friendships’ develop, grow and sustain … no matter if you are in an online or offline space …

So next time someone asks you to ‘Add’ them as a Facebook Friend, and thus you are giving them permission to see into the privacy of your world … ask yourself three questions:

1. ‘Are they really a friend?” [See the definition above!]
2. “Do you want to potentially build a friendship with them?”
3. OR “Are you just being friendly?”

Smiles

Kelly

P.s. “Family are the friends you grow up with; Friends the family your choose; and Strangers the friends you haven’t met yet” (Dr. Kelly Page, 2010).

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Is anybody exploring this question? Increasingly we see hundreds of reports telling us about how many people are using twitter, uploading photos to Flickr, the average number of friends we have on facebook.

But no one seems to be asking the deeper questions about how is the web making people feel? Or even discussing if this is an important question to ask? So we decided to ask it!

Over the last few months, I’ve had the fortune to work with some great people in the area of Social Web – DK and Mark from MediaSnackers and we’ve been asking just this question as part of a project called The Web Makes Me Feel (TWMMF)

TWMMF is a MediaSnackers project exploring the emotional responses to the web among 13-19 year olds in the UK. CASE Insights collaborated with MediaSnackers to analyse the data and produce a detailed report of insights from the findings.

Why TWMMF?

This project came out of discussion at MediaSnackers about how all the research about Youth and the Web we often see, hear and read most of it is about usage behaviour and profiling and segmenting youth based on their technology usage and is what we already know.

13-19 year olds are often called digital natives, super-communicators and mediasnackers. We know they are heavy users of mobile phones, Facebook and Bebo, they love downloading music and playing games online and we also know they are not using Twitter or reading newspapers. These insights are no thanks to the recent report by 15 year old Matthew Robson for Morgan Stanley, we’ve actually known this for a while (Oh Hum!!).

But a big question all this research is missing is: How does the Web Make You Feel?

Human beings are powered by emotion, not by reason!

Reason alone cannot make us feel anything and it’s how we feel that motivates our behaviour. Why then do we continue to treat human beings as rational consumers of the web?

Hundreds of research reports, papers and presentations scatter the web profiling and modeling economic and rational motives for web usage. Focused on how easy or useful the web is, or on complex formula and metrics profiling web behaviour, we thought we might be missing a trick.
Formulas can’t deal with human emotion. Formulas have no imagination or empathy. Formulas can’t tell you how the web makes me feel?

In reality, our experiences are shaped by deep feelings and emotions – feelings of joy, fear, love, hope, fantasy, happiness and sometimes even a little magic.  Every person we deal with is an emotional human being and yet we continue to treat them like: Numbers. Targets. Statistics.

When faced with complex or inadequate information we fall back on a hybrid approach in which reason and emotion become intertwined. However when they are in conflict, emotion wins every time. The neurologist Donald Calne puts it brilliantly:

‘The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions.’

So How Do Youth Feel?

So coupled with over 1000 postcards, we targeted youth across the UK to tell us in their own words, one word to be exact: The Web Makes Me Feel …. and then in a few more words to explain: Becuase …

Over 431 postcards were returned and analysed, identifying over 143 emotions and over 65 reason why the web made them feel that way.

The top 10 emotions expressed by 13-19 year olds were: Happy. Connected. Good. Excited. Free. Entertained. Bored. Interested. Sociable. Independent. Overall youth found the web made them feel positive, however as they got older, around the ages of 17-19, youth reported significantly more negative emotions.

Yesterday, 15th July 2009 at NESTA in London we launched the website and report. To read more about the insights from the project and how the data was collected and analysed, download the detailed The Web Makes Me Feel Report.

Maybe this will start you thinking more about: How does the web make you feel?

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