Are Online Friendships as Valuable as Offline Ones?

“Virtual friends are like snowflakes. They descend in their thousands. They melt in seconds.” -Mouloud Benzadi.

How many friends do you have on Facebook? A few? A hundred? A thousand? Can you name each and every one of them? you
would probably say no, right? I bet that you even forget that they existed. Then why would you accept their requests if you
don’t even know them personally? With the continuous advancements of technology, it is now easier to make friends online
with anyone, any age, any race, any identity, literally anyone. As I tried to compare and contrast online friendships from offline
friendships, I see numerous reasons why my answer to the question “Are online friendships as valuable as offline friendships?”
is an unfortunate no.

We’ll be diving into this in three main reasons. The first is that you can have more memories and experiences with an offline
friend. The second is a lot of these online friends will turn out to be fake or a scam and the last is that online friendships don’t
last forever.

Can you give out hugs to your online friend? Go shopping and swimming together? Well, you can do those with offline friends.
It will be much easier to have a connection with your offline friends because you can share more memories and experiences
with them. On the other hand, you can only share links of photos and video with online friends. Your offline friend can appear
right beside you when you need company and comfort. They are someone you can spend time with and will eventually help you
when you have problems while an online friend only appears among your contacts on Facebook or other social medias and you
guys can often miscommunicate and lead to arguments.

So, what if you actually decide to meet up? On the internet, you never know whom you are dealing with behind the screen. You
may have pure intentions for them but that doesn’t mean they have the same for you. You never know if they actually mean
what they say to you or not. Maybe one day both of you decided to meet up but after meeting that person, you start questioning
“Is this the same person I’ve been chatting to on Facebook or is a completely different person?” because you noticed that their
personality doesn’t really match your expectation. According to enough.org, 10% of tweens and 20.54% of teens encountered
predatory behaviors from someone online so that means in worst case scenario, when your so-called online friend invites you to
meet up and you were expecting someone your age but actually it turned out to be a predator or a middle-aged man trying to
victimize you in his crimes.

Remember the quote that I mentioned in the beginning? “Virtual friends are like snowflakes. They descend in their thousands.
They melt in seconds.” I have chosen this quote because based on my experiences, it is very true to me. I have had a few online
friends in the past. Most I’ve met on twitter but they didn’t really last. All of them didn’t even last for 2 weeks. In the first few
days, I had so much to talk about with them since we belong in the same fandoms but at some point in time, everything started
to die down so there wasn’t really anything to talk about anymore and as time goes by, I eventually forget each of them and
everything that we talked about.

Going back to the main points that I’ve mentioned, the first, you can only have limited experiences and memories with an
offline friend, second, meeting with an online friend can be a disappointment and can also lead you to danger, and lastly, online
relationships do not last forever. You all listened to what I’ve been saying right? After hearing my three main reasons, Instead
of me answering this question, I want you to answer this question yourself “Are online friendships as valuable as offline
friendships?”. Have your opinions changed? because for me, After diving deeper and analyzing, It is very clear for that Online
friendships are not as valuable as offline friendships.