No doubt we are all on a digital age and one of the things we would all attest to is the paradigm shift of all human activities to the digital ends including friendships.
In our world today, friendship has evolved beyond the boundaries of geography and physical presence. People who never saw one another before is so comfortable talking to one another and helping out one another on the basis of trust that they are online friends.
The rise of various social media applications also fuels the existence of online friendships making it very easy for people to interact from both ends of the continents, people we may never meet.
One peculiar thing about these online friendships is that it starts from shared interest and mutual understanding.
Someone in Nigeria can comfortably be discussing, sharing ideas and advices with someone in Canada who he or she has never seen before and what are friends again if not who you can do all these things with?
Online friendships has some wonderful perks that comes with it to be honest and one of them I will always make mention of is the certain level of comfort it offers when you know that the person you are talking to cannot immediately see your facial expressions or body language making you to be in control of how much information you reveal and also at what time you want to reveal them.
Some relationships they say is best maintained by distance because meeting offline could sometimes expose flaws or differences that remain hidden in the online world with people we call friends.
It won't go without mentioning that the social media is also a very toxic place. Many a times, we've seen some conversations, supposedly private conversations making the light of the day and this might be because someone you confided in good faith felt like exposing it to the world, sometimes without even a good reason but just to humiliate you.
It becomes terrifying as to answering the question of , Who do you even trust in the online space?
Someone you met and called a friend holding him or her in high esteem might not even be seeing you in the same light but rather hiding under the clicks of keyboard.
But then, will online friendships ever replace offline friendships?
I don't really know the answer for you but I think personally it's a NO for me
There's something that really comes with this face to face connection that comes from offline friendships that cannot be replicated with video calls and text messages no matter how real-time it becomes.
Human relationships basically thrives in presence! This creates a sense of reliability.
Picture is Mine
In the end it depends on what exactly you are looking for in friendship, whether it's online if offline friendships, the most important thing is the sincerity of the people involved. It's not a question of where nor how you met the person but how much you care and trust each other! It's about how reliable you are to one another, it's about how you show up for one another in time of need.
That! Is the true definition of friendship.
Thanks for reading and have a nice day ahead 👍