Benefits of Internet Friendships

Internet gives us an opportunity to meet and befriend people we probably wouldn't befriend in real life. Not only it expands the circle of people we can communicate with, it also erases such barriers as age, looks, education, social status, etc.

Not that we are normally biased against age, for example, but for many of us it is very unlikely to form a real-life friendship with someone considerably outside of our own age group. I am in mid thirties and an introvert. For that reason, I am not very comfortable around teenagers, although I do like teens and definitely wouldn't mind making some teenage friends. I also find myself gazing at elderly couples at fast food joints and restaurants, wondering what kind of lives they have lived, what stories they can tell. I often wish I could get up and join their table, offer to treat them to anything on the menu and start a long conversation. Unfortunately, I can't. My introvert nature screams against it.

Internet offers a unique chance to reach out to teens or grandmas, women and men, people of all kinds of lifestyles and occupations that have nothing to do with my own. I don't see how they look and they don't see me. All we see is what we say - that is, type on the screen. I guess you might even say that you get to know the very soul of the other person - provided that there is honesty, of course. Which is a whole different subject.

I wonder what those elderly couples would think if I suddenly did come up and ask for permission to join their table. I'd venture to guess that our conversation, if it took place at all, would not be very deep. On the other hand, people open up quicker online, at different forums and message boards, probably because of the very setting: it is World Wide Web, you can talk to anyone. It's okay. They don't mind; that's what they are here for. And they don't want anything from you, so there is no need to be apprehensive and suspicious. Shyness disappears. Barriers go down.

Being able to stop and think before typing my next message plays a role for me. I guess being able to disconnect at any time does, too. Perhaps the latter is partly the reason why some people do not take Internet friendships seriously: yes, you meet at this certain site, perhaps regularly, and perhaps you even get to know quite a lot about these folks. But then you shut off your computer - and they are gone from your life. Is it true? I would think it depends on the person. There are many cases of people transferring their conversations from forums to e-mail, from e-mail to occasional phone conversations, and sometimes even meeting in person. In other cases, people do not get to actually see each other, but their Internet communication continues through years. Isn't that proof of something that touched their lives and has value?