Dereiewicz explains how the change of friendship affects all other relationships: “Romantic partners refer to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend. Spouses boast that they are each other’s best friends. Parents urge their young children and beg their teenage ones to think of them as friends. Teachers, clergymen, and even bosses seek to mitigate and legitimate their authority by asking those they oversee to regard them as friends” (200). He has concern for the children who look to peers to replace the previous structures since kids are let free by the decline of parental guidance and care (Dereiewicz 201).
Dereiewicz explains that the structure of friendship has changed as well as its role. What has been lost in regards to traditional friendship, is the dedication to morally build one another up. (202). We have refrained from expecting a friend’s greatest intent to be to lead us to the right by giving moral counsel and correction (Dereiewicz 202). He says, “we practice, instead, the nonjudgmental friendship of unconditional acceptance and support- “therapeutic” friendship, in Robert N. Bellah’s scornful term” (Dereiewicz 202). He sees friendships becoming less “real,” being filled with small lies and shallow conversations in order to “keep the peace.”
Dereiewicz also believes social media to be a major change and disconnect to friendships. He says, “scanning my Facebook page gives me, precisely, a “sense” of connection. Not an actual connection, just a sense” (Dereiewicz 204). What we embody, other than community, is merely a personal feeling rather than a unified interaction; a feeling of association- the sensation outside the format, provided that we are fortunate. (Dereiewicz 204). And presently friendship, which emerged to its current significance as a substitute for community, is heading the same way (Dereiewicz 204).
He concludes by saying that our culture is replacing experience with information (Dereiewicz 206). He shares his thoughts on how we are distancing ourselves from real human contact and relations. Dereiewicz also implies that to truly know a person as a friend, we must turn off our devices and communicate vulnerably.
