ABSTRACT
Friendship makes our lives go better in multiple ways. It produces good consequences such as pleasure, self-knowledge, and self-development, it satisfies both intrinsic and instrumental desires that most of us have, and, plausibly, it is intrinsically valuable. But does friendship contribute value to our lives in the same ways or to the same extent if it is maintained via social media? Can social media usage hinder the production of the standard good consequences of friendship? Can it reduce the intrinsic value of friendship? In using social media, are we gaining the advantages of convenience in keeping in touch with friends and of maintaining friendships over great distances, but reducing or even losing the value of friendship in our lives? Are we in some sense trading quantity (our multitude of Facebook ‘friends’) for quality?
