Have we ever took the time and thought, “What is friendship?”. The idea of friendship can sometimes be misunderstood as some people don’t realize they are only an acquaintance in the equation.
Friendship means being able to tell each other anything and understanding without questions. Friendship obviously means more than this but on a basis of it all, you need to trust one another. In the time of social media, staying connected as well as meeting people online is somewhat the norm. It is often advised not to talk to strangers online as you never know what people's true intentions are with you.
Online friendships often happen through mutual friends. You happen to come across someone's profile, let's say Facebook or Instagram, and notice you have mutual. A few things that may have intrigued you about the profile would be the interests, school, location, or you just like their content. You then send a friend request and if they have the same curiosity they accept it.
Often when we accept friend requests from people we don’t know but have mutual friends with, we share their profile with the said mutual and try to find out more about that person to get a little insight into what kind of person they are. I’m sure most of us do it and it’s very normal if you don't then you need friends. I feel that people tend to open more to their online friendships compared to face to face friendships. The reason being, you feel that you may be misunderstood by your ‘Friend’, but are they really your friend if you can’t be understood?
When this happens you slowly began to detach yourself from face-to-face friendships as you no longer feel vulnerable in the friendship and at that point, you should question if you really are friends.
Throughout 2020 I feel like we haven’t really acknowledged how hard it has been for friendships. These are friends you know you love and care about their well-being. Some have isolated alone and it has had an impact on their health both mentally and physically, whereas at one point we began to question whether this is what reality has now come to. The idea of being alone is scary, especially when you have no one to go to due to a pandemic as well as other factors you had to consider for friends you knew were vulnerable to the virus.
I feel you can have a connection with online friendships however it’s not the same as that physical human connection. Like when you’re sad from a breakup, you would want a friend to hug and possibly cry it out too. Online friendships are there for you to a certain extent but that doesn’t mean we should disregard them. That being said, friendships work like relationships, an emotional connection is needed for you to trust one another and accept each other's flaws as your own.
Some people have often mistaken an acquaintance for a friend just because they may have done something together once or twice. An acquaintance is someone you know who you aren’t emotionally connected with, like the person you run into in the hallway or feel comfortable meeting in a group setting, but usually not by yourself. In most scenarios, an acquaintance is someone you often meet in social settings, such as a party or randomly in a store as you have no general desire to let this person in your personal circle.
