In today’s digital world, most friendships and relationships start online. More than half of the younger generation make new friends online, and more than a half of those admit they have formed five or more friends via one of the social media portals.
The younger generation claim to have connected with someone on one of the social media portals that they wouldn’t have most likely connected in real life, more interestingly, most of the friendships or relationships that are formed online, stay mostly online only. Shockingly but not surprisingly, only one in five people have actually met an online friend in real life.
Most if not all of the younger generation, uses social media as the means of keeping in touch with the friends they already have. They also claim to feel more connected to their friends’ emotions if they are connected online.
Most importantly, the vast majority of the younger generation who uses social media believes that people share too much personal information online on social media. They also claim to feel some sort of pressure to post things online that makes them feel good about themselves and makes them look good to other people.
However, not all interactions are online. The younger generation still spends the vast majority of their time with friends in-person, especially while doing activities or while at a school or college, but smartphones and social media have a profound impact on how they form and maintain their friendships.
In most cases, technologies make them feel closer and more connected to their friends. Almost all of them use texting as the primary way of keeping in touch with their friends.
Emailing, however, is no longer a preferred way of communicating with the younger generation. Less than one in ten people use emails as a way of communicating or keeping in touch with their friends on a daily basis.
Most friendships are usually kept strictly online; only a few of all online friends have actually met their online friend in person. However, connecting or being associated with people who you would otherwise never get a chance to connect with is an excellent way to increase or improve your knowledge of other places, cultures, religions, and socioeconomic demographics.
Texting is clearly the most popular method of communication for almost everyone. These days, when we make a new friend, the very first thing that we do is that we tend to share our phone number so that we can text each other to remain connected.
More than half of all people text their friends on a daily basis or even more. Only half or less of these people see their friends in person on a regular basis.
This has some negative consequences too. More than half of the younger generation who use social media have seen people post about things that they would have never known about them, and just a small segment of those have had at least a few postings on social media about things about them that they have no control over.
Sadly, a few people even report feeling worse about their own personal life mainly due to what their friends post on social media. We all experience something like this though, and it is a fact that your news feeds are most likely making at least some people a little bit more jealous about you.
Stop feeling envious and think about why you feel the way you do. Most likely, this is something you can easily change.
It is always better to talk things out face to face by meeting in person. It is incredibly easy to have a misunderstanding online with a lack of in-person communication.
As you can clearly see, technology has the power to end some of the friendships or create misunderstandings. However, we must also thank technology in helping us stay connected and offer support when it is most needed.
There are so many startups that are launching websites where the younger and even the older generation can potentially connect with other like-minded people from all over the world, one such site is ispace1 network to find new friends, love, romance, relationship, dating, affair, and more. These kinds of portals are slowly becoming the new norm for how people connect with others, and this new trend is only going to become increasingly popular in the coming years.
