ABSTRACT
By looking at how social robots are being implemented and used, and by examining social media users' practices, people can come to better understand friendship itself. Just as thought experiments can help them to clarify and organize their ethical intuitions, emerging technologies offer unique opportunity to see how real-life "thought experiments" play out. Geriatric patients may mistake their relationships with friendly-looking robots for the sorts of social connections they have historically associated with appearances of friendship, while children may not learn the distinction between appearance and reality unless they are introduced correctly. The relationship between social media and friendship is more familiar to many of people in their daily lives. But despite ubiquity of social media, its effects on their relationships are quite tricky to sort out. Among other things, this stems from the fact that social media users are often at least as innovative as its designers.
