Friendship: An old concept with a new meaning? Yair Amichai-Hamburger a,⇑ , Mila Kingsbury b , Barry H. Schneider c a The Research Center for Internet Psychology (CIP), Sammy Ofer School of Communication, The Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya 46150, Israel b Psychology Department, Carleton University, Canada c School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Canada article info Article history: Available online 26 August 2012 Keywords: Friendship Friendship formation and continuation abstract Today many young people form and maintain what they consider friendships through the net. Internet friendship appears to some as modifying the meaning of real friendship and replacing it with something more trivial. In this paper we explore the complexity of online friendship. We start by seeking to gain an understanding of why and how friendship relates to wellbeing. We then look at how friendships are formed, focusing on the concepts of propinquity and homophily and how they play out within the context of online friendships. We delineate the major dimensions of friendship that have emerged in theory and research and then comment on how these features of friendship may be affected by the advent of wide- spread electronic communication. The differences between offline and online companionship, social sup- port, tangible support and protection, exclusiveness, conflict resolution and relationship stability are also considered. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the challenges of conducting research on the behaviour of children and young people on the Internet and the difficulties in defining the term ‘‘friendship.’’ Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction: use of the Internet by children and youth Friendship is known to be vitally important for the well-being of children, adolescents and adults. The links between children’s friendships and their wellbeing were confirmed in an influential quantitative review by Newcomb and Bagwell (1995). Friendships are thought to prepare children and adolescents for intimate relationships as adults (Sullivan, 1953, – see also longitudinal data e.g., Bagwell, Schmidt, Newcomb, & Bukowski, 2001). Friends may provide invaluable social support, perhaps more than less intimate acquaintances do, at stressful times. It is important to note that while most of the research docu- menting the implications of friendships for psychosocial adjust- ment has been conducted with regard to friendships that are based primarily on face-to-face interaction; the number of children and young people using the Internet to communicate with friends has increased dramatically over the last 10 years (The World Inter- net Project 2010 report). Nearly 40% of children in the USA have profiles on a social network such as Facebook (PEW 2009). The advent of Facebook has been seen by many to have modi- fied the definition of the word ‘‘friend’’ among some of the many millions of Facebook users. However, that does not necessarily mean that the concept of friendship even in the cyberworld has be- come redundant or that the psychological importance of having friends has been diminished in any way. It is our contention that much of the extant literature on the implications of electronic communication for friendship is based on a highly oversimplified concept of what friendship is and means. To a certain extent, this may be necessitated by the limits of the questionnaire methodol- ogy used in most studies and especially the limits of on-line data collection. It is probably impossible for researchers studying on- line communication to incorporate all or most of the intriguing and multi-faceted ideas about friendship that are contained in philosophical and psychological writings. In this article, we delin- eate the major dimensions of friendship that have emerged in the- ory and research and then comment on how these features of friendship may be affected by the advent of widespread electronic communication. 2. The basic concept of friendship The essence of friendship has been deliberated by psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists and sociologists. The distinguishing features of friendship have been the subject of philosophical debate throughout the ages. Psychologists once believed that children’s friendships are ephemeral and superficial. This was dis- proven by research showing that intimate bonds are formed even between preschoolers (e.g., Howes, 1983). In subsequent psycho- logical studies, children and adolescents were interviewed about their understanding of the concept of friendship, their expectations of their friends and their beliefs about the essential difference 0747-5632/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.05.025 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +972 9 9527649; fax: +972 (0)9 9563616. E-mail address: yairah@idc.ac.il (Y. Amichai-Hamburger). Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 33–39 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Computers in Human Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh