Online Friends vs. Real Friends

張貼日期：Mar 08, 2020 5:37:31 PM

Bryan Yang

Nowadays, the technology has brought us to a next level. People can almost do everything by using their smartphone. In the past, if someone told them they could make friends from different continents by using their mobile phone, they might think it is impossible. However, making online friends has become a trend in these few years. In my opinion, the advantages of having online friends outweigh the disadvantages.

First of all, people can tell anything to their online friends with no pressure. Sometimes the boundaries between people can lower our defence and we can tell them anything at all. A person is able to complain or confess everything to a stranger who would never meet their family or co-workers. Therefore, making online friends is one of the ways to release stresses in the modern world.

Also, the online world is a wide world filled with different kinds of people. A person can explore different countries’ culture through online friends. For instance, some video calling apps have allowed people to 'meet' face-to-face through the use of video streaming. Therefore, with the advances in information technology, there is no distance limitation to make new friends. And people can choose the persons they are interested in and keep them in their life.

Moreover, people do not need to worry about how to maintain the friendships. It is fine to stop the conversation at any time and it would not be awkward because the chance to see each other again is extremely low. In this way, people can focus on their own life without too much concern for the online relationship.

However, we must admit the fact that friends in real life are superior to online friends. It is because with online friends, we usually only see lines of text in instant messages and are unable to see the person's body language and the tone as well as his or her real intention and feeling. People can know a person’s character better if they can develop a deeper give-and-take relationship. Another downside of online friends is that spending too much time in making online friends might make a person more isolated from the real life.

In conclusion, I must agree that making online friends has its disadvantages, but the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. All we have to do is to strike a balance between making online friends and real-life friends.