A cunning web, like Andersen’s storm, is able to “outweigh all the signs”: to transfer a casual acquaintance into the status of a friend, and to quarrel with a real friend for many years … Why is this happening?
“Natasha and I met two years ago: although we live in different cities, we ended up in the same educational project,” says 32-year-old Oksana. – We conferred on Zoom, corresponded on Facebook. Business communication has grown into a personal one, we can spend hours discussing our dogs and children’s school problems.
Natasha is sincere and reasonable and helps me with advice. To her, the only one of all my friends, I confessed that I did IVF and two eggs were finally fertilized. Natasha and I even came up with names for them: Nyusya and Marusya.
During this time, we have never seen each other, six months ago I changed jobs, but our friendship continues: Natasha firmly promised that she would come to my christening.
Thanks to the World Wide Web, we keep in touch with old friends and make new ones. It can be a teammate in a team game, a sensitive subscriber in social networks who will help find a nurse for an elderly mother. Or a young man from Tinder who turns out to be a cool conversationalist.
It is not easy to predict which relationship will thin out, remain formal, and which will grow into a close relationship. Conversely, real friendships may not stand the test of strength when they step into the digital space.
Reject can’t make friends
“The status of a “friend” implies that both participants in communication receive information about each other and that their interest in the events of each other’s life is mutual,” explains cyberpsychologist Natalia Bogacheva. – But in reality this is not always the case: mutual subscription can be an act of courtesy (it is easier for us to accept a request from a colleague or relative than to explain why we do not want to do this).
In addition, we perceive some social networks as more personal, while others as more professional. “Friendship” in them, most likely, will also be perceived by us differently.”
The connections that we have established in absentia are easier to maintain (they do not oblige to anything), but easier to lose (they do not trail a trail of shared experiences). Can such a relationship be considered friendship at all? On this score, researchers put forward different versions.
According to one, we consider online relationships to be friendly when they include the exchange of personal information and a willingness to seek support and advice, but still perceive them as less durable when compared to real ones in terms of trust, mutual understanding and closeness.1.
But researchers who studied the relationship of adolescents in the digital space came to a different conclusion: network connections retain all the basic qualities of “face-to-face” friendship with its characteristic features: frankness, effective help and confirmation of each other’s significance.2.
“Virtual friendship has an advantage: it most often arises on the basis of a common interest or personal similarity,” comments Natalia Bogacheva. – Among my friends, for example, there are those with whom there was practically no chance to meet in real life.
We can say that we belong to non-overlapping communities: geographically, professionally, socially. But these relationships seem to me much more meaningful and warm than, for example, with housemates or even with one of the former classmates.
Common cause
Having established close relationships online, we can maintain them in the same format, or we can translate them into live communication. Does it affect the quality of friendship?
“Until the virtual friendship develops into a real relationship, it is more like a romance in letters, where both partners can express themselves well and study the other’s self-portrait, but may never know how much the self-portrait matches the original,” says the Gestalt therapist. Maria Lekareva.
– True friendship is not only conversations, these are deeds and trials lived together. Not necessarily shoulder to shoulder, you can do a common project on the Internet, but share emotions, discuss ideas, share money, and so on. Build, protect, organize. Friendship is tested by concrete actions in difficult circumstances.”
Of course, everyone puts their personal meaning into the concept of virtual friendship. But hardly anyone will argue with the fact that close, time-tested relationships are a great value that requires respect and care. And this concern does not end with disconnection from the Internet.
Like a star with a star
Bloggers, streamers, movie stars and other social media personalities have millions of followers. Is it friendship or not?
Contact with “influencers” or influencers can give weight to our own posts. Dozens of articles on the Internet are devoted to how to “make friends with a celebrity”.
“But such connections can only be called friendly in exceptional cases,” explains cyberpsychologist Natalia Bogacheva. – A follower emotionally perceives a celebrity as a friend or loved one.
Commenting on the posts of an idol and sometimes even receiving a response in the form of a like, a fan can feel closeness and kinship of souls with him. But this is a one-way (also called “parasocial”) relationship, since the influencer himself may not even be aware of the existence of a particular subscriber.
It is better to remember the illusory nature of online friendships in order to avoid the not illusory pain of disappointment.
1 Mesch G. Online and offline relationships. Educating 21st Century Children… OECD Publishing, Paris, 2019.
2 Yau, J. C. et al. Are the qualities of adolescents’ offline friendships present in digital interactions? Adolescent Research Review, 3(3), 2017.