It is a fact that relationships develop on the net nowadays. Young people use network com-munities a lot and this is one of the reasons why new relationships arise very rapidly. Whether the early Internet research was characterized by suspicion or enthusiasm, it still examined the
“virtual” world in isolation from the “real” world (Wellman, 2004). Moreover, it was assumed that the social consequences of Internet use depended on the features of the technology and that these consequences could be applied universally (Woolgar, 2002, 4).
Only recently social scientific Internet research has started to pay attention to the connections between offline and online life and how the Internet is embedded in our everyday interaction (e.g. Wellman, 2004; Boase & Wellman, in press). In addition to Ellison et al. (2006), Boase and Wellman (in press) stress the need to study Internet use in its social contexts, of all social relation-ships, not just those online. (Lehtinen 2007, 16) The machines and technology haven’t replaced face-to face – communication, but rather full-filled and enhanced it. (Heinonen 2008, 10) Accord-ing to Heinonen, net-acquaintances and friends are different from friends and acquaintances from the ‘real life’. (Heinonen 2008, 159) Heinonen still highlights, that her research-respondents felt both online and offline-relationships equally valuable. On the other hand, they felt offline relationships more important than online relationships. (Heinonen 2008, 98) Feelings of com-munity are usually attached to only face-to face contacts. Behind these thoughts is a question of is virtual community real community? (Heinonen 2008, 95) People, who regularly discuss in online communities or people who spend a lot of time on the Internet, do not see online social-izing as game, but as a way of spending time with friends and acquaintances. (Heinonen 2008, 236) Online communication is not meant to replace phone or face-to-face communication, but can be used to increase the efficiency of communication with an existing group.
Are friendships changing? It could be said, that they are. The new technology and web 2.0 for example are changing the whole ’let’s get friends’ – phase as well the whole idea of friend-ship. Level of friendship is changing in to a form when one no longer needs to see ones friends face to face. It has become more of saying quickly ‘hello’, than to spend as much time with the friends. Of course, this is a result of technology but it has a lot to do with the fact that people are nowadays extremely busy and the way of life has become hectic. One also spends time on the net – because of work, studying, having nothing else to do, so it is natural to come in terms with the new ways of keeping up with friends. It is common to go and watch friends’ gallery photos and comment them, look friends’ blogs through so one can be aware what happens in other people’s lives. Any of these activities does not require any actual face to face experience.
But is that a bad thing? Do friendships become somehow less valid, less valuable or weaker if they are kept alive via Internet? Is online friendship a false friendship; are we just bits hanging around together – we are online, offline – when ever we feel like it.
The time of the Internet has forced us to re-determine friendship. At the same time it re-deter-mines us, people. According to the experiences of Heinonen sense of community is a feeling that is indeed based on solidarity, trust between people, common rules and agreements, shared atti tudes, functional social relationships, and stability. It is notable that a sense of com munity can exist without physical bounda ries or locations. (Heinonen 2008, 238) Online sense of com-munity is very real to those who ex perience it, and virtual communities are a part of people’s lives. The phenomenon no long er take place just online or offline, nowa days both are equally
the Internet. Two previously separate spaces become boundless. Social relationships and sense of community remain. They become real and personal regardless of the space used. (Heinonen 2008, 243)
The new technologies challenge the more traditional definitions of interpersonal communication.
Recent trends in mass communication (such as personalization of messages) and interpersonal communication (such as the increasing use of technical devices to communicate interpersonally) have blurred the boundaries between the two fields, forcing us to develop more sophisticated theories and models. New technologies can be seen as relationship enablers – they not only add new forms of interpersonal communication, but they change how individuals interact. (Konijn et al. 2008, 3) To an increasing degree, we find and form our friendships and communities in the virtual world as well as the real world. These virtual networks greatly expand our opportunities to meet others, but they might also result in our valuing less the capacity for genuine connec-tion. As the young woman writing in the Times admitted, “I consistently trade actual human contact for the more reliable high of smiles on MySpace, winks on Match.com, and pokes on Facebook.” That she finds these online relationships more reliable is telling: it shows a desire to avoid the vulnerability and uncertainty that true friendship entails. Real intimacy requires risk—the risk of disapproval, of heartache, of being thought a fool. Social networking websites may make relationships more reliable, but whether those relationships can be humanly satisfy-ing remains to be seen. (Rosen 2007.)
It is extremely difficult to define virtual or traditional friendships. Often virtual friend can be seen as a pseudo- or quasi-friend if compared to relationships initiated in the real life. On the other hand, unfortunately often people are forced to realize that the friends in IRL are not eventually friends at all. At the end, ‘friend’ means different things to different people, but in every case a friend usually is important and if it is a true friend, then it does not matter where he/she has come from – online or IRL.
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