A few months ago, I was in the middle of a two-hour train ride in a foreign country to visit someone I had only talked to online. In fact, over the past three years, I have been lucky enough to make and meet almost all of my best friends I’ve made online. The absurdity is not lost on me. Ten years ago, my parents preached stranger danger. Every person online was a 40-year-old criminal who would track you down if you ever gave so much as your real first name. The normalization and explosion in the use of social media in all ages normalized online friendships. It wasn’t only angsty teenagers and naive young children who signed up for social media anymore. Parents joined Facebook groups to organize after soccer game snacks, and business professionals used social media to network. Companies joined social media to advertise and open alternative customer relation communication channels. The improvement of technology also factors into the acceptance of online friendships. In the early days of the Internet, connections were limited to anonymous chat rooms where you had no idea if the person you were chatting with really was who they said they were. However, today stranger danger is less of an issue. Video chat not allows you to see their real face, but friends who are separated by distance to talk with ease. As more and more people upload personal details, especially in the form of social media, it is easier to “fact check” someone. As a result, online friendships have become more legitimized. Offline friendships and online friendships have different benefits and yet are equally valid. Let’s take a look at the benefit of online friendships starting with two different studies comparing online versus offline friendships.
A study done by the University of Southern California found that online friendships are just as meaningful as face-to-face ones. According to psychologists, the six core characteristics of offline friendships are self-disclosure, validation, companionship, instrumental support, conflict and conflict resolution. Online friendships have six core characteristics or a digital parallel. Online contact enhances companionship between friends via conversations that can continue throughout the day and night without disrupting others, and it also allows more time to control emotions and calm down before crafting and sending a response to something upsetting.
The University of Amsterdam also studied offline versus online friendships. The study aimed to compare the quality of online, offline, and mixed-mode friendships (i.e., friendships that originate online and extend to offline settings) among users of a social networking site. The study also aimed to investigate the relative contribution of proximity, perceived similarity, and social attraction to the quality of each of the three types of friendships. After surveying over 2,000 members of Dutch social networking sites, researchers discovered that the quality of all three types of friendships increased over time. The differences in quality between online and offline friendships remained significant over time, but those between mixed-mode and offline friendships disappeared. Proximity did not affect the quality of any of the three types of friendships. Perceived similarity was the most important predictor of online friendships, whereas social attraction was the most important predictor of mixed-mode and offline friendships. Social attraction in a friendship content refers to the kind of attraction you feel when drawn to someone because you like that person and enjoy being with them him or her. Perceived similarity refers to the belief that you have something in common with another individual(s) whether that be a hobby, value, or interest like a movie or artist.
Sometimes a bond you share with someone behind the screen can be deeper than your offline friends. The main reason is the Internet allows us to find people with the same interests and beliefs. Like it or not, the Internet has connected the world showing that it is a small world after all. If you think you have a niche interest, I will bet you can find an online Reddit community full of hundreds of people with the same interest.
To make a friendship on or offline, you need to break the ice. Perhaps the best thing about online communication is how easy it is to strike up a conversation. For people who are introverted, shy, or have social anxiety, it is hard to make the first move, but on the Internet, you can take time to write out exactly what you want to say or choose to like or retweet a person’s post to break the ice. Along the same lines, you can get to know a person online faster. Give the less “risky” nature of online; people become more vulnerable. We can talk about our flaws, bad days, fears, and so on. In real life, vulnerable subjects are often left to later times in a friendship when we know a friend isn’t going to leave or laugh at us.
Technology, in general, has made the world more connected than ever before. At first, this may seem like a disadvantage. I can’t go hang out with my friends in London and vice versa. internet friends can help fill an important gap missing in the world today. They as writer Elizabeth Broadbent coins it becomes your “virtual village.” Internet friends hold you up when people in your offline life can’t be bothered. They can help you celebrate milestones or the little victories in life. Something is comforting in understanding that there is someone out there that cares. A simple “oh that sucks” reply to a tweet about how you’re having a horrid day can make all the difference. Being there for someone is a gift and being there for an online friend is very easy. Additionally, Making friends with someone different than you cannot only be a learning experience but it’s just plain fun. You’ll always have something new to talk about.
For a lot of people such as myself, I’ve turned to internet friends because they can share your interests when no one else understands. For example, I a huge theatre nerd but I don’t live near Broadway or the West End, but I’ve found my group on the Internet. We can talk for hours and hours about the nuances and subtle differences between each performance. Often it quickly dovetails into a discussion about one’s own lives. Because we share a common passion, we get each other and therefore give us a sense of safety. There are some things I’ve told my West End theatre friends I haven’t told my family or closest friends whom I’ve cried with and slept over at their apartments. Internet friends can be like that. The safety of a screen can lead to confidences we wouldn’t otherwise share.
It would be remiss not to talk about the downsides of online friendship. Distance makes hanging out hard. If you have a social fix, online friends may not work because no text or video chat can replicate someone physically being in the same space as you. The potential of miscommunication increases with online friendships simply due to the nature of communication. 80% of communication is read through body language. Text messages and chats can be easily overanalyzed for problems that are not there, or the opposite problem of brushing away problems could happen.
Making up after a fight could be harder with online friendships. While that is certainly a good thing for toxic relationships, people can easily block, mute, and ignore you online. Along the same lines, online friends can more easily disappear than offline friendships. As easy as it is to make friends, it is as easy for them to ghost you. Real-life friends do move away, but there is always an option to take the friendship online. If you grew up with online friends, you have certainly experienced this. Your online friend disappears. Maybe their account got deleted, or the website you use to talk about is no more. Some people take breaks from social media, or tear down their accounts and rebuild them somewhere else. All it takes is a changed username to make reconnecting with an online friend very difficult.
One of more personal consequences of online friendships your internet connection can turn into an internet addiction. The instantaneous nature of online communication makes it less likely for internet friends to become disconnected it harder to disconnect. The instant connection also can give you instant euphoria like getting a like on a photo on Instagram. If you have international time zones can create a perceived need to be constantly online to be involved and not left out.
Despite the disadvantages, online friends are just as valuable as real-life friends. Offline friends have their own challenges and benefits too. My advice is to communicate well and often. If you put in the work, a friendship that started with a simple reply on social media can turn into a lifetime friendship. If you’re fortunate enough, that online friend will become a real-life friend too. After all, there is no better feeling than seeing the face of a friend who you’ve talked to for years and finally getting to hug them instead of sending a hugging gif or emoji.