At first we have to define what a friendship is and what it means. It is sometimes difficult to sepa-rate for example friends and mates, but in this survey and article friendship could be defined as
something important and social activity that measures up with few particular points. Friendship can be defined as a voluntary, mutual relationship that usually carries a positive emotional band.
(Bukowski, Newcombi & Hartup, 1996) The researchers of friendships usually agree that friend-ships of children and adolescenThe researchers of friendfriend-ships usually agree that friendfriend-ships of children and adolescents are based on reciprocity, affection, fondness, having fun and liking of the friend. (Bukowski, Newcombi & Hartup, 1996) In reciprocity, one has to take care of a friend and vice versa, friends do things together and both sides benefit from the social utilities that friendship offers. Of course, friendship is a culture relativistic term; these previous definitions are mostly western. There are also differences between different age groups – friendship carries different meanings and aspects in different ages. Pals and mates differ from friends. In real life friendship differs from being “just friends” in the level of closeness and intimacy that is reached.
(Mesch & Talmud 2006, 38) In virtual worlds things might often be different. In this article term virtual friend means mainly a person that one has met online for the first time. Friendship cre-ated purely online can hereby be stcre-ated as virtual. There is however variations on a term virtual friend, just like in the real world where the term friend is quite polysemous as well. See Table 2.
Table 2 Defining different forms of friendship
Type of friendship Relation Bond of friendship Common Level of trust A virtual friend Person one
We all rank our friends, albeit in unspoken and intuitive ways. One friend might be a good com-panion for outings to movies or concerts; another might be someone with whom you socialize in professional settings; another might be the kind of person for whom you would drop everything if he needed help. But social networking sites allow us to rank our friends publicly. And not only can we publicize our own preferences in people, but we can also peruse the favorites among our other acquaintances. We can learn all about the friends of our friends—often without hav-ing ever met them in person (Rosen 2007). With mates one does not necessarily share his/her intimate thoughts so easily and a mate is more of an acquaintance. In the net relationships it is probably more common to get mates than friends easier, but of course these “mate ships”
can also evolve to genuine friendships over time. In the virtual world, however, the setting for a relationship can be as complex as the relationship itself. Researchers have found that many teens and tweens actually favour online relationships over face-to-face contact. Online, these kids feel they can be themselves, unencumbered by peer-enforced dress codes, attitudes and styles. Online, they don’t need to worry about their appearance and they can freely express thoughts and feelings without worrying about the pitfalls of being judged in person. On the other hand, online kids can just as easily falsify their beliefs, personalities and other aspects of their lives to deliberately mislead others - even if just for the fun of it (Belden 2008).
Ulla Heinonen, who has studied electronic communities and sense of community and wrote her doctoral thesis, which is broadly used as a background for this article, on experiences of social, professional, and educational communities on the Internet, suggests that young peo-ple seem to consider online socializing as a sort of game, but to them socializing is a bit more regular. Their activities include a lot more lying. For young people the most common motives for spending time in a virtual space are having a good time and sense of adventure. For them virtual relationships is not that serious? (Heinonen 2008, 236) This is still probably matter of youth, their culture and uncompleted process of maturation rather than matter of technology.
(Heinonen, 2008, 156) Lynn Clark (1998) has done her own research of teen’s net behaviour and found out similar results. The youths virtual relationships were often shallow and superficial matters were lied because no one could really see. (Heinonen, 2008, 155) Actually, it could be questioned if these are real relationships at all? These could represent the false type of friend-ship mentioned in the figure 1.
Most people who use social networking web sites do so as a way of keeping up with friends and family in a forum which is entertaining, informative and easy to use. But for others they are treated as some sort of online popularity contest with people striving to attain as many
“friends” as possible - some users appear to have hundreds, sometimes thousands of friends.
Maybe it all starts with an intention of getting many good friends but often it changes at some point to hoarding of friends and acquaintances. Most people have about five close friends and know about 150 people in total, most of them acquaintances with whom they are on nodding terms. Internet-users have the same number of close friends but many more casual acquai-ntances. (Smith 2007) Similarly, there is competition to be able to boast the highest number and the most impressive “trophy friends” — celebrities such as Lily Allen who use MySpace and other sites. The practice of collecting friends, dubbed “MySpace whoring”, is part of a so-cial revolution that might “change the nature of human relationships”. Whereas relationships traditionally started with a face-to-face meeting, fans of social networking sites can make new contacts at the click of a mouse (Smith 2007).
Dr. Will Reader, of Sheffield Hallam University, has stated that the virtual world had enabled
working sites say that one in ten of their close friends have been made in the virtual domain.
But new research suggests that anyone looking to form new and genuinely close friendships via online social networks is possible going to be disappointed. Naturally, we have take into account the fact not every one is searching for true friends on the net. On the contrary, the net can be a playground, a place where one does not have to take things so seriously at all.
Reader suggests that real life meetings are still needed to foster genuine ”real” relationships which are based on trust. Research by Dr. Reader, who has been studying over 200 networking site users, shows that they still have only around five close friends, and that these are almost always forged through face-to-face meetings. Social networking sites allow people to broaden their list of nodding acquaintances simply because keeping in touch with people online is easy.
They decrease the cost of maintaining and forming these social networks because we can post information to multiple people. But to develop a real friendship, we need to see that the other person is trustworthy. We need to be absolutely sure that a person is really going to invest in us and is really going to be there for us when we need them. This is an important factor when we are discussing of true friendships but is not necessarily the case in virtual circumstances.
Youngsters use online utilities and social meeting places also to get some kind of approval from others, to get some appreciation and admiration and also to gain self-respect. These purposes do not have that much to do with trust but they are as important to all concerned as creating a true friendship is to someone.