Internet friendship
From Free net encyclopedia
Internet friendships are friendships between people who have met online, and in some cases know each other only via the Internet. Like Internet romance, it has been widely debated and often criticized.
It is, many people argue, very difficult - if not impossible - to establish a meaningful relationship with somebody you can't see face to face. It is difficult to gauge a person's emotions and feelings, and there is a high possibility of deception - people lying about who they are.
Supporters of online relationships, on the other hand, argue that not seeing the other person actually helps the relationship: you have fewer inhibitions, because you feel that the person you are speaking with doesn't have any expectations of you, and therefore it is easier to "be yourself". You are judged on nothing but your personality and screenname. They also point out that online friendships are similar to penpal relationships. It is the experience of many people that in internet relationships most people end up being much more open about their thoughts and feelings than in non-online relationships.
In addition, many proponents of online friendships point out that those who say that the lack of face-to-face contact cheapens internet friendships could be considered shallow to want to see who they are talking to, thus implying that how their friends look could change how they think of them.
In her book Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (1995), Sherry Turkle analyses this and other new phenomena in interpersonal relationships.
Since the development of high-speed, broadband internet, the face of internet friendships has changed utterly. Now it is possible to hold full audio and video conversations via the internet, allowing you to be relatively sure the person you're talking to is who they say they are, as well as observing all the nuances and subtleties of speech and facial expression. Still, some (often more introverted) people prefer not to use these technologies.he:חברויות באינטרנט fi:Verkkoystävyys zh:網路友誼