Social Media and Relationships

I went to a debate between the ever charming Roger Scruton and Tyler Cowen over the question: "Does Social Media Destroy the Human Relationship?" The debate began with a moment of irony: Cowen's microphone was off and when he started talking, people called for him to turn it on. He looked a little confused, so anti-technology Scruton calmly instructed him to "push the button."

The debate came out as a debate between social science (in economist Tyler Cowen's repeated statements that he was giving us facts, real empirical facts, which can't be argued with). It seemed to me that his citation of many studies was markedly lacking any theory.

Scruton repeatedly compared social networking's effect on friendship to that of pornography on sex: "Sex without transition costs is the end of the erotic." He emphasized the beginning of friendship as an important aspect to the friendship itself. Drawing out this metaphor further, Scruton cautioned against an addiction to friends.

My critiques: First, I thought they were conflating love and friendship. Evidently Cowen met his wife online, while Scruton met his while falling off of a horse. I didn't find this discussion of online dating particularly insightful into social networks--I don't think that too many people go online as their primary way of making friends (which is to say, facebook primarily keeps you technologically connected with people you met in real life, while online dating puts you into real life contact with people you might otherwise not have met).

Also, Scruton accepted Cowen's definition of friendship, which made no reference to what is central in Aristotle's conception of frienship: shared activity. Also, Scruton found only the friendship of virtue in Aristotle worth defending; at one point he said that the other two forms of friendship are valueless (this is not Aristotle's position).

What Scruton did say about friendship, which was insightful, is that the end of friendship is itself, while the function of friendship is help in times of need, as well as people to celebrate with. In order to be useful, Scruton said of friendship, it must be useless.


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