#COGITOERGOSUM: Liquid Friendship in the Age of Social Media

In the 21st century, widespread social unease coexists with a proliferation of friendship, a contradiction explored by sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. Bauman recounted responding to a Facebook user who boasted of making 500 friends in a single day, noting that he had not made that many in 86 years. The social media era has fundamentally altered the concept of friendship, eradicating the complexity and difficulty once associated with it. Friendship, formerly a fragile flower requiring constant care, has become a tool for social affirmation. Classical and philosophical traditions, once seemingly unshakable, have been overturned: quantity, speed, visibility, and functionality are now the passwords to social life. Cicero spoke of the eternity of friendship and said that worthy of friendship is one who has within himself the reason to be loved; today we have replaced that with a remove friend button. Our time has confused the complexity of being friends, mistakenly applying economic and technological categories to emotional life, which only fuels the psychosis of indifference and loneliness. How can we aspire to social progress and invoke humanity if we do not start from the most immediate thing under our senses, the other from us? The path from continuous challenge to sentimental cooperation is long and winding, but promises breathtaking panoramas. The article was written by Francesco Girolimetto for MIfacciodiCultura and published on Artspecialday on October 16, 2026.