The Internet will open up new vistas and create a global village - meaning you can make friends all over the world. At least that's what the Internet promises us. But the difficulty is that it cannot think with the human mind. The truth is that we can’t maintain relationships with more than a certain number of people. No matter how hard the Internet tries to get you to communicate, its efforts are defeated by your personal thoughts.

The problem is twofold. First, there are only so many people we can remember and maintain good relationships with. This number is about 150 people and this number is determined by our brain capacity. Second, the quality of your relationship depends on how much time you invest in it. We usually spend more time and energy on a small group of people, and distribute the remaining time and energy to as many others as possible. The problem is, if we don’t spend a lot of time and energy with a person, our relationship with that person will grow weaker and weaker until the friendship ends with “that’s the person I used to know.”

This is of course not to say that the Internet has no positive effects on society. On the contrary, it has many (positive effects). But the problem is not that it allows you to increase the scope of your social circle and expand your relationships to other parts of the world, but that it allows you to maintain good relations with your current friends even if you have more friends on the other side of the world.

In a sense, this is a good thing. But it still has a downside. If you continue to invest time and energy in old friends even though you will never see them again, then you are definitely not making friends in the new environment of your life. I even suspect that this may not be a wise choice. A meaningful relationship should allow you to interact with each other face to face. The Internet will slow down the end of friendships, but it won't stop them from happening.