Virtual Friends vs. Real Friends
Human beings have been involved in social interactions since the beginning of time, or at least that’s what the history books have shown. Groups of people spend hours together, getting to know more about each other and enjoying the social interaction. Recently, a new form of meeting people has been discovered via the Internet. The issue with these sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, is that individuals need to realize not everyone is a true friend. This is also the same with in person, face-to-face friends. On Facebook, a person can have over on thousand friends. People need to know how these friends were made, how much the virtual friends can be trusted and if the friends are reliable if needed. These same questions can be asked of face-to-face friends.
Meeting new people has become easier with the updated technology and the invention of social websites. There are more than five hundred million active users of Facebook alone making it possible to become friends with a college student in Australia or a graffiti artist in London (“Facebook”). With over nine hundred million objects to interact with, such as pages, events, community pages and groups users can find friends with similar interests as their own (“Facebook”). Facebook is an online site that lets people find others and it’s as easy as one click of a mouse to become friends with any other user. There are other ways to meet friends; in the classroom, in college, at work, through friends or wherever life takes place. These people interact with one another and go through their days together or spend time together to get to know one another.
Not everyone can be trusted; people can betray one another on the internet. Individuals can secretly have different identities. Facebook has a privacy setting that lets the users to control what friends see. Yet people can always find ways of getting to the information through other information websites, by hacking, or going on another account pretending to be someone else. Sixteen percent of teens consider meeting individuals they have only talked to online and eight percent of them have met someone they had only known online ("Enough is Enough"). Making friends online with the wrong person can spill over into real life, making real life more difficult; causing paranoia, depression, or unsafe feelings. Yet this isn’t always the case. Knowing who is really on the other side of that screen is majority of the time a good idea. In today’s world there have been reports of private investigators, sex offenders and police officers creating fake accounts to gain access to accounts (Wilson). If the person isn’t known already don’t accept the friend request; gaining access to information will increase; looking through personal information, postings, and photos. People can have issues with others in everyday life too. It’s a simple fact; everyone lies and not everyone can be trusted. On the other hand, there are friends a person can trust with anything and all their secrets will be kept safe inside. It just takes the matter of time the individuals spend together, get to know one another and have the chance to get a good feeling on one another.
Depending on the person sometimes some sort of support when life gets tough is needed. People will go to family and friends; real life friends and the friends found on social websites. Getting in touch with people has become easier with the technology; calling, texting, emailing, and even Facebook. When communicating with friends on the social networks, who knows if the message will be read or if they will get online within the day or even the week? Unless the user gets online every day, which fifty percent of the Facebook users do log in every day, (“Facebook”), the message may not be received in a timely manner. Just because a person is on another person’s friends list doesn’t mean the Facebook friend will be reliable and be there for the other person. Real friends can be the same way; text messages, phone calls, internet messages can all be ignored. Even doorbell rings, knocking or face-to-face can be ignored. But if a person has that one friend that will be there for anything then it’s one of the best feelings.
Friends are a part of life; they can help a person during hard times if needed. Either virtual or real life, people can help each other. One should be a little more careful with friends that have never been seen before. Always consider how the friend was made, how much this person should be trusted, and if they are reliable. Friends can be beautiful treasure or a knife in the back.
Works Cited:
"Online Sexual Predators." Enough Is Enough: Protecting Our Children Online. Enough Is Enough, 2006-08. Web. 01 Oct. 2010. http://enough.org/inside.php?id=2UXKJWRY8#6>.
"Statistics Facebook." Welcome to Facebook. Facebook, 2010. Web. 05 Oct. 2010. http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics>.
Wilson, Robert. “10 Facebook Safety Tips How to Protect Yourself.” The Turley Law Firm. The Turley Law Firm, 2009. Web. 20 Oct 2010. <http://turleylawfirm.com/library/10-facebook-safety-tips-how-to-protect-yourself.cfm>.
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