This species has grown a great deal since the ’80s. A best friend used to be a rare and wonderful thing. If someone had a best friend who they can share anything with, people would look at that as if they are really lucky. If you ask someone whether they would take a bullet for their friend, they would think about how much they need that person in their life.
The invention of the internet, a population explosion, and the people’s demand for freedom and independence has decreased their interest and reliance on good close friends. The Internet has changed the way humans communicate all around the world. E-mail and Instant Messenger has made it much easier to communicate faster and with more people. When they used to handwrite letters, it would be to one friend and it always had a special affectionate vibe attached to it. These days, no one goes to the trouble of handwriting a letter, enclosing it in an envelope, taking it to the post office, and anticipating an answer in weeks when you can have mutiple answers arrive from more people in less than 5 seconds through Instant messenger.
Social networks such as Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter have dramatically increased their friend count, and also reduced the neediness on a few special people. Human population is increasing exponentially, and logically of course, people would have more friends and acquaintances. In 1980, the world population was 4. 5 billion. If the number of friends a person has was based on numbers, one human would have 1. 55 times more friends than a human living in the ’80s would have.
Of course, there are an endless number of factors of how some would have more friends than others. Also, more friends means less need for close best friends. For more than 400 years, Americans have been fighting to be independent from their king in England. Today there is no better independence. Most people wake up in the morning, alone or with family members, watch some boring news, and go to a job that they chose using their boring transportation, and briefly interact with a few co-workers, not intending to form any type of connection.
They then go home, watch a little bit more boring T. V. , eat, then go to bed alone. There is simply no need for a best friend to be there and help them survive day after day. People are more selfish now more than ever now that all they need to survive is themselves. So when you ask a bunch of random people whether they would take a bullet for their best friend, the first thing they think is ‘Well, do i need him/her? Oh well I have alot more friends. I hope he/she survives the shot though. ‘