Leading one to wonder. If the friendships or whatever feelings these tools provide are placebo vs real. If something bad happens to you in the real world are the online friends going to help? Does support extend to seeing a number with a heart next to it. Does getting 1000 hearts replace the support of close friends when you experience loss?
It's been a while since I've had real friends on the internet. I can't say if that's "my life" or if that's "the internet has changed." But here are things from my past life with internet friends:
1. They helped me get healthier after doctors wrote me off for dead, including hand-packing pure medication without chemical additives typically found in store bought brands and mailing it to me as a Christmas present.
2. They helped me figure out how to raise and appropriately educate my special needs sons.
3. They exchanged Christmas presents with me.
4. They met me for lunch or made a day of it every couple of years when they were in the area.
5. They helped me start my first website.
6. They helped me attend two different conferences on the cheap, one in gifted education, the other in urban planning.
7. They helped me make it through the night without killing myself.
8. They helped me make it through my divorce under very difficult circumstances without killing myself.
(Yes, I also did things for them. I'm not listing it here out of respect for their privacy and brevity.)
Those are just the things that obviously come to mind off the top of my head without thinking too hard about it.
And then I was homeless for a few years and saw just how amazingly shitty people on the planet are capable of being. When I most needed some kind of support, the entire world just wanted to let me know I was a total fucking loser who didn't deserve any support whatsoever. In fact, an awful lot of people wanted to make sure they did all in their power to make my life worse while pretending they were good people or some nonsense.
So I just have no idea at this point if the world I knew somehow magically disappeared, is gone forever and cannot come back or just what. But I have, in fact, known real friends via internet, some of whom had a profound positive impact on my life though we never met in person nor even called each other on the phone.
Edit: To be fair, none of these were Instagram or Facebook friends. But they were internet friends.
Some of them, I never met at all. Some, I knew by phone as well. But these were all primarily online relationships.
eg: livejournal irc icq / etc blogs / rss
In my experience: it's allowed me to focus all of my emotional energy on the 5-8 actual close relationships that I have, rather than burning myself out living like some kind of small-time celebrity with an audience of hundreds of casual acquaintances that expect me to like posts and respond to messages at their beck and call.
One day, I just quit. Left everyone in the lurch, with no explanation. It was a huge turning point in my personal life. My mental health improved immediately - and all of a sudden, I had so much more time and emotional energy for the things in my life that I really, truly cared about.
I've kept in touch with a handful of people that I was close to. My new policy is, "if I need to hear from you, you'll know because you have my phone number". The rest of them are still there, arguing about clipless vs flat pedals, and chromoly vs carbon fiber, and everything else, as if I'd never left - or showed up in the first place.
More likely than not, they'll forget about you just as casually as they came into contact with you. Ask yourself if it would REALLY bother you to never hear from them again. In my case, it didn't; and I know for a fact that it really didn't bother them to go for long periods of time without hearing from me, too.
It's okay to let acquaintances be acquaintances. You owe them exactly as much as they owe you - in the case of these people, it's "pretty much nothing" - in the case of the people who are a major part of your actual life, it's "a hell of a lot".
The ones who asked "did you quit Facebook?" via good old fashioned text message (lol I'm being slightly silly here but only just) and actually stayed in touch, actually would mention events going on to make sure I knew I was invited...it was quite an experience.
One friend has gone above and beyond in being accessible and supportive following a divorce recently and helping me find a therapist, dropping by to talk in person etc.
Those are the relationships that will follow you to the grave and I'm thankful for it.
For the 5 people I care to keep in touch frequently, I have installed Signal on my smartphone and my PC and we chat very frequently (when we don't meet)
We got a couple sightings through it, although ultimately we found him four days later after someone spotted him and then saw one of our lost dog posters a couple of miles away and called us, so he wasn't found directly by it.
I even had people I only considered to be internet friends tell me how they spent time after work driving around looking for him, sometimes for a lot longer than would be reasonably expected.
So, I didn't really consider social media to be all that useful before I had the scariest thing in my life happen to me (so far at least), and then I discovered people online really can do more than just give a 'Like' or a 'Sad Face'.
Yes, i have heard of and been an online friend who helps people offline. Fund raisers, contact with nearby relatives when concerned, checking on people, plus the fact that this IS the real world and emotional support online is the same thing as ‘offline’. L If something bad happens online, your online friends can help there, too, but your ‘real world’ friends by definition can’t really.
I think that's the point they are making. That "casual" is a distraction from deeper relationships.
As a young person, I was able to count on online friends to give me a place to crash or a meal when I was hungry. As an adult, I'm not really sure that I could ask these things of my "real" friends.
With social media it’s reversed. You first friend someone and then maybe possibly build a relationship. All the activities you do in common with the vast majority of ‘friends’ is as mindless as possible (liking something or commenting but the comment rarely has any bearing on the actual individual whose post you’re commenting on).