Digital friendships? How has technology changed real world friendships?

[Dani]

How has technology changed the way you form and maintain friendships? For me, and I think for most people of my generation, phone calls have been replaced largely by text messaging. In depth conversations with real world friends is mostly done in person versus hours spent on the phone, and text messaging is for making plans, quick notes, sharing interesting life tidbits, etc.

[Reverend Jim]

While we still get together with others, those events are fewer and fewer. Most of my interaction is now with DMs and email.

[SCBWV]

While texting has largely replaced phone conversations, it has helped maintain local and distant connections that would have faltered. I exchange texts with people that live in the same town, or nearby, that I wouldn't call. These days, many people prefer a text. Texting and FaceTime allow me to maintain contact and relationships with people across the country and even in different countries that I couldn't otherwise. I'm still in touch with several I initially met online; some I've never met in person. My generation grew up with landlines and party-lines, pre-Internet or, dare I say it, pre-color TV. It may be less personal, but it works.

[mateovert]

agree. and quite a lot of communication with close friends looks like memes exchange on a daily basis.