Digital Friendship in the 21st Century: Social Media Technology as a Digital Friendship Platform Perceived by Generation Z

Social media technology, especially as everything becomes more digitalized, plays a crucial role in bringing society closer together. One of them is becoming into a communication platform for developing digital friendships. Furthermore, it become part of daily life. As Generation Z is in "always available mode," social media facilitates building digital friendships. The main goal of the study was to identify the role of social media in building digital friendship, the level of effectiveness of social media as a digital friendship platform in terms of phatic level, gut-level, factual level, and evaluative level of communication, and its impact on establishing a digital friendship. The study used quantitative descriptive research to gather data among 100 respondents in Quezon Province age 18 to 25 years old. Using a self-devised questionnaire, online survey was done to describe and clarify the respondents’ knowledge of and experiences with social media technologies as digital friendship platforms. Statistical tools such as frequency, percentage, and weighted arithmetic mean were used in the data analysis. The study revealed that respondents strongly agreed on the role of social media in building digital friendship. Social media is extremely effective on the phatic level of communication and very effective on the gut-level, factual level, and evaluative level of communication. Social media also has an impact on establishing digital friendship. It is recommended that social media users participate in societal conversations about digital friendship and its risks