One of the interesting phenomenon that our culture became aware of quite quickly in social media was the apparent contradiction that a person with hundreds of "friends" online could feel extremely lonely. This has generally been explained by saying that our friendships on the internet are more superficial, or shallower, and that a person who only invests themselves in online friendships will miss the depth of those found in real life.
But as social media services and their customer numbers have grown, a general trend can be seen that people (especially in the youngest generation) are spending large amounts of time uploading large amounts of information to their online selves. A lot of the information is not particularly useful or beneficial to anyone. Why, for example, would three hundred people need to know what I am having for lunch?
My own theory is that this is an attempt to replace quality with quantity. Real life provides good quality relationships that the internet cannot replicate in the same way. So the tactic to overcome the lack of quality is to substitute it with a large quantity of information. Because, the social media bosses might reason, surely information is the sole ingredient of relationships? The idea is to simulate intimacy with transparency.
My own thoughts are that in a generation or two, this attempt will still be seen as inferior to the real thing found in real life with real people. Call me traditional.
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