SC8116 Journalism I: News Writing For The Global Audience Continual Assessment 10

Online friendships fiction or reality?

-- by Ng Ching Peng (DTVM 01, 1020922) With the prominence of the Internet now, more people are making friends online, and meeting up with them in person. We interact online with people, share good times and bad times with them, and online friendships can be as real as offline ones. Yet there are still a large number of people who think online friends are imaginary. Why do people still consider online friendships fake?

=/=/= Getting banned from the net. Parents still say youre all imaginary, so I have to concentrate more on reality instead. This was a tweet one of my online friends, simply known as Alex, sent just this January. The few mutual friends we had on Twitter expressed their outrage over being called imaginary, and sadness at Alex having to leave until she convinced her parents that she could come back. Me? I was insulted and puzzled. I didnt like being called imaginary, and wondered why others still considered online friends and friendships fake. My online friends are real people Ive even met some in person, after weve forged our friendship online. So what is it about online friendships that make them so different from real ones?

Meeting friends through the Internet has become commonplace today, where many are connected to social networks like Facebook or Twitter. More and more people are making friends online. According to Facebook, the average user has 130 friends. More people are meeting up offline with

their online friends. Face-to-face contact over the Internet has become possible through applications like Skype.

So why do people still consider online friendships to be fake? I feel many are still wary of online friendships, especially since the idea of how you cant call it real unless you meet in real life has been so deeply ingrained into us. But look at how the media portrays online friendships we often see stories about a teenager meeting up with his or her online friend, then it ending in deception and disaster. And even with applications like Skype that attempt to bridge the physical gap between people, a person still cannot observe how their online friend acts on a day-to-day basis.

But is physical interaction really the only thing that defines the realness of a friendship?

An increasing number of people are connecting with others through online social networking sites. According to Experian Hitwise, as of October 2011, Singaporeans spend the most time on Facebook, at 38 minutes and 46 seconds per session. As of 2010, Facebook has already passed 500 million users worldwide. And this is just for one social networking site imagine how much more people are making online friends over other sites like Twitter or Tumblr. According to Stanford Universitys Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the requirements of a real friendship are mutual caring, intimacy and shared activity. People question the realness of online friendships when these requirements are not met, mostly due to the ambiguity of the Internet. Online friends are there only at certain times of the day, and interaction with them is limited to trading information about each other over the Internet. It feels impersonal, so many do not view it as friendship. But it is possible for a friendship to form once a persons thoughts for another online grow beyond seeking information, to caring for that person.

The physical distance of online friendship is another glaring issue. But distance is not what defines intimacy. Anthropologist Robert Dunbar has said that the average person has 150 friends in real life. These friends are of varying degrees, and Dunbar says that there is a core group of 5 friends with most people, and another 10 consisting of an inner circle. With friendships, a person would only feel intimate with roughly that number of people in this respect, proximity does not matter and there is no difference between online and offline friendships.

Mutual interest leads to shared activity. Online, communities are often segregated based on interest. Communities dedicated to one interest attract people who have the same interest. Many online friendships are first formed this way, and deepen with time as friends take part in shared activities regarding the common interest.

Online friendships fulfill the requirements of what makes a friendship real, so why is there still all the uncertainty over them?

Wong Shang Qi, a friend of mine whom I first met in person but speak mostly to online, said this: Its not that I dont feel that friendships with my online friends are real. I just dont want to meet any of them in person because Im scared that they might ruin the image I have of them. It seems that even with online intimacy, shared activity, and mutual caring the lack of physical interaction still matters a lot. Forming an image of someone based off their online persona also begs more questions if I meet my friend in person, what if theyre different from how they are online? What if I end up disappointed? Would the friendship not work out then? So if friendship is really so dependent on physical interaction, then arent all online friendships fake due to a lack of it?

Yes, people may behave differently from how they are online, or may pretend to be a different person altogether. The Internet is a place to make friends and acquaintances, but also to be disappointed and misled. But how can a person discount all the time theyve spent with a friend online? Not everyone is out to pretend to be someone theyre not. Meetings online are without the physical barriers that come with physical interaction, and friendships are formed without judgment over appearances or such. Online friendships are every bit as real as offline ones. Im not saying that online friendships can substitute offline ones. Both are important, different in nature, and bring different benefits and problems. Online friends can become an instant support

network just like how offline friends can be there for you, sharing in your private moments. Friends fight, rely on each other, and help each other out. The only difference between online and offline friendships is the manner in which they do so, and both types of friendship are as real as each other. What we should be looking at is not whether online friendships are real or not, but to examine how friendships are formed both online and offline. Both also require different ways of going about it, like how online friendships are largely formed through common interest, and offline ones through proximity. One requires physical interaction, and the other requires sharing information on cyberspace. I think the truth is that this difference in how to form a friendship is what causes the divide between whether a friendship is real or fake.

We are afraid of false intimacy, feeling close to someone only to have them betray us later. Online friendships are built via a non-tangible means, without physical interaction, so people are uncertain and reluctant to believe in how real something like that can be.

Questions and opinions? Email me at: chingpengng@gmail.com (1095 words)