Online Friendship, Becoming More "Real" By The Day

            In a world where everything seems to be going digital, the realm of friendship is also intertwined with the Internet. Whether you are chatting with someone you just met on Facebook, discussing ideas on Twitter, or trying to find a lover on Tinder, the Internet plays a huge role in our communication with friends. It also plays a huge role in meeting new people. On many social media sites you have the capability to talk to someone you just met at a party and try to get to know them better, or even possibly meet someone from across the world and begin to forge a friendship with them, there are no limits. In this blog, I will discuss the idea of friendship on social media and the Internet.

            In our class lecture we spent a few days discussing communication, the Internet, and how people can find a love interest and even lifelong friendships. There are both positives and negatives to these friendships that I would like to discuss. One of the well-known positives of online friendship is the easy access to communication channels that we have. Whether it is chatting on Facebook, texting, or Face timing, the possibilities are endless to be talking to our friends at all times of the day. However, some of these forms of communication via the Internet can cause problems. For example, sometimes someone may type something with one meaning and the receiver may interpret the message a whole different way, this can cause problems in the friendship. Another problem is that people may believe that they are friends with someone, while in reality they are talking to a person who is not who they say they are.

            The whole online friendship realm is a mystery to me personally, but I would like to try to understand in the future how people can trust complete strangers on the Internet with some of their most personal secrets and beliefs. Personally I only use social media and the Internet to chat with friends whom I have met in “real life”, but many people these days are using the Internet as a forum to forge new friendships. There are many sites where people can find others with similar interests to them and create a friendship based on that. For example, someone may be very interested in bicycles or motorcycles, this person can then find somewhere on the Internet to chat with people about their similar interests and become friends. Some people may think that these friendships that are created over the Internet are strange and shallow, but in many cases, these friendships are some of the strongest and most important to the people involved. In the article titled Let’s Really Be Friends (A defense of online intimacy), the author describes how he has met friends online that have become people that he confides in most. This is very true for many people who meet friends online, they feel a sense of safety and a proclivity to be able to truly express how they feel with this person that they are talking to. Personally, I do not think that I would confide in someone who I have never met, but hey, to each his own as they say.

            The Internet has birthed the beginning of a lot of things since its existence, but one of the biggest things that the Internet has lead to is friendship. Whether you are chatting with someone about your favorite sports team or telling someone your inner most secrets, the Internet most likely has a friend for you.