Devaluing the concept of friendship
What does it mean to be friends? In my book, it means having an open, trusting, platonic relationship with someone you would never hesitate to lend a hand to whenever needed. Just as an experiment, go through your Facebook friends list and see how many people on it are actually friends by that definition. I have had people add me on Facebook whom I have only met once... or even not at all. I have old classmates, people I knew before I moved, friends of friends that I've met at social events. And mixed into all of this are the few people I would consider real friends.
They don't deserve that. These are people I have grown up with, helped through difficult decisions, shared intimate secrets with. And they're just thrown onto a list with a hundred other random acquaintances as if they mean nothing more to me than some young high school student I helped with homework when I was a teacher's assistant. Sometimes friendships can be formed online, allowing you to meet and interact with people you otherwise wouldn't be able to. Some of my closest friends are people I met playing video games online. There are always different levels of friendship, but true friends should be respected more than to be reduced to another meaningless status update on a news feed.