Friendship: Friends in high-tech places

Already there are humanoid robots capable of convincing people they are emotional beings (Image: Emile Loreaux/Picturetank)

Many blame the internet for loosening the ties that bind us â€" but it's also weaving a new kind of social web

"FRIENDSHIP is the only cement that will ever hold the world together," said US president Woodrow Wilson. A century on, could it be that our fast-moving, high-tech and increasingly urbanised existence is causing that cement to crumble?

Much has been made of the US General Social Survey, which reported that between 1985 and 2004, the average US citizen's number of close friends â€" the people they can turn to in a crisis â€" fell from three to two, and individuals with no confidants at all increased from 8 to 23 per cent. In the UK, a rise in the number of people living alone and the weakening of community ...

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