The Need for Social Interaction
Humans are social beings who need to communicate, talk, and share joys or sorrows. However, it’s not so easy to meet someone new in real life. After all, no one walks around the city with a sign saying “looking for friends” or places such an ad in the newspaper. This is where the internet comes into play.
Finding Like-minded People Online
Through the internet, you can find friends in your own city or across the country and beyond, even in the most remote and exotic countries. Correspondence is often in one’s native language if both parties speak it, but sometimes people want to interact with foreign language speakers. This type of communication allows you to immerse yourself in a living atmosphere. It is always better to converse with a foreigner, as hearing the language helps assimilation, but mastering written language is also crucial.
Sometimes, foreigners who wish to practice Russian for practical purposes approach Russian speakers. This makes the conversation even more interesting and beneficial for both correspondents. Additionally, senior friendship sites offer limited opportunities for elderly individuals to connect and share language interests, enriching their social lives even further.
Ways to Find Friends and Like-minded People Online
- Social Networks: Nowadays, this is the most popular and accessible way to communicate and exchange information. It is very easy to register, and friends often gather so quickly that you need to filter incoming requests to keep only those with whom you want to maintain a friendship.
- Forums: There are numerous communities grouped by different interests, hobbies, work, creativity, shopping, and so forth. Many friends around the world are made by those interested in nature conservation, vegetarianism or veganism, or those wanting to learn foreign languages.
- Friend-Finding Sites: Here, you can enter information about yourself and specify the type of people you want to communicate with. The system will provide all matching options, allowing you to evaluate each potential friend’s profile, message them, and start communicating.
- Dating Sites: Mostly, people look for romantic relationships here, but sometimes solid and long-lasting friendships develop instead.
- Existing Contacts: If you have relatives and friends living in other cities or countries, there is always the possibility to correspond with them or communicate online. Many consider video bloggers as close acquaintances due to their public and open personal lives.
Drawbacks of Online Communication
- Safety Risks: Your correspondent could be an inadequate person, scammer, terrorist, or religious fanatic recruiting new followers into a sect. Fortunately, such people are not very common online, and if someone seems suspicious, you can simply stop communicating with them.
- Lack of Personal Information Security: It’s not necessary to share all your details, at least not until you know the correspondent better. Important personal data, addresses, phone numbers, and photos that could give away your wealth level or vacation plans should not be shared.
- Absence of Live Contact: The ability to connect with various people online is so engaging that one might stop leaving the house, spending all free time with virtual friends. If this becomes a habit, it could lead to the loss of real-life social connections and loneliness.
Communicating with Foreigners
- Language Learning: Friendship with foreigners has a significant advantage—it stimulates language learning. Most people know some English, which has long been the language of international communication. If both correspondents are eager to be friends but know little English, it becomes an excellent incentive to deepen their language skills.
The Value of Friendship
Each person has something to share with the world—knowledge, skills, understanding of their place in life and history. But the most important are the warmth, kindness, participation, sympathy, and empathy—feelings that people need the most.
