Unfriend?: An analysis of friendship comparing subjects’ perceptions of face-to-face versus Internet-mediated relationships

The purpose of this study was to find out how similar or different peoples’ perceptions are of friendships which are primarily face-to-face and those which are primarily internet mediated. It was hypothesized that, based on qualities which are shared by each respective medium, individuals would not find perceptions of face-to-face and Internet-mediated friendships to be significantly different. One hundred fifty-one undergraduate students at The University of Akron were given a survey developed from a literature review to test how important certain general friendship qualities were to their concept of each type of friendship. It was found that, while all of the qualities were found to be of some degree of importance for each type of friendship, every quality was found to be more important in face-to-face friendships. From the results of this study, it was theorized that individuals have a lower expectation of the degree to which each of the considered qualities would be fulfilled in a primarily Internet-mediated friendship than one which is primarily engaged face-to-face