“I force people to have coffee with me, just because I don’t trust a friendship can be maintained without any other senses beside a computer or cell phone screen.”── John Cusack.
Nowadays, people are making friends online more often than before, because it’s easier than talking to someone face to face. I think online social media not only can help you to extend your interpersonal relationships worldwide, but also can destroy your present social life.
First, I want to talk about the advantages of making friends online. Everyone must have experiences with online social interaction. But why are people willing to have friends that they do not even really know? Because sometimes it’s easier to talk to someone you are not familiar with, so you can talk a lot about yourself, your life, or even complain about your real friends. If you do not want to continue the conversation, you can just use any excuse to end it. Because they cannot see you, they will not suspect you. Also, if you are not an outgoing person, you will feel more comfortable making friends online instead of making friends in person; because you do not have to see their face, you won’t feel awkward when you do not know what to say.
Online social interaction also has a lot of disadvantages. Once you become a good friend with someone, it’s not easy to meet each other, because he/she might live in a country that is across an ocean from your country. Second, you cannot have any physical contact with each other, which means you cannot be close to them. Last, you cannot be one hundred percent sure who they really are. The information you know might be fake. No one has to be honest about anything online, so do not trust anyone easily, unless you meet him/her in real life.
For me, I like to see people sharing their lives on social media and I think that’s fun, because you do not have to meet them in person and you still can know what their lives are like. I used to make friends online when I was in middle school, but I am not in contact with them anymore, because a friendship is not easy to maintain only through the Internet. You do not know what their real life is like, and they do not know yours either. Maybe you have talked about it, but lives will change and people will change. It’s not easy to maintain your friendships in both the virtual and real world. In the end, you will only keep in touch with real friends.