Putting a price on friendship

I’ll give you $2 for the guy you talked to at an office party last week. The friend you play hockey with every weekend, on the other hand, is worth $75. Your college roommate? She’ll net you a cool $1,000. If the idea of assigning a price tag to each of...

How to find support online during life’s big passages (for Oprah.com)

Friends are there to share your celebrations, support you through difficult transitions, and mourn your losses. Social media enable that sharing and support in new ways, across distances that would formerly exclude people who are far away but dear to your heart. Find out how to get the support you need online.

A practice to make your online friendships more meaningful

I wonder if technology and social media has compressed our relationships into a process that we can barely recognize? That question is at the heart of Rhett Smith’s thoughtful blog post, Technology: Connected, Yet Lonelier Than Ever. He argues that by making it...

Your social media friends are your real friends

Diana Adams is one of a growing number of social media junkies who have experimented with taking some time off from the web. She describes “hitting a wall” with her social media use and online relationships, and taking 8 days off from the net so that she...

Social networks say good-bye to difficult but crucial interactions

Todd Essig has a thoughtful post about how social networks have affected the process of saying good-bye in our culture. Now that the hospital where he works is closing, he anticipated more than the usual end-of-school-year good-byes. Instead, he’s seen less: as...

Is social media just for married people?

Think Social is a blog from the Paley Center for Media that focuses on the public benefits of social media. It’s an incredible blog and one that you must follow if you are looking for thoughtful reflection on both the social and political potential of social...

The virtues of losing touch

Google Buzz got slammed for prepopulating its users’ friends lists based on their most frequent email correspondents. Facebook has taken heat for privacy settings that default to a high level of sharing. So what’s the big deal about sharing stuff with...

Do social networks make birthdays better?

Today is my 39th birthday. Among other things this means I’ve now spent 2/3 of my life online, since we got our first computer when I was 13. (Apparently it also means that a year from now I’ll be forty, which all my forty something women friends tell me...

Spice up your dates with technology

The new Italian restaurant in our neighborhood was the perfect place to celebrate our eighth wedding anniversary. We settled into a cozy table for two and turned our attention to the menu. It wouldn’t be easy to decide on our courses: The menu included almost...