Online Friendships: Why I’m No Longer Playing By The Rules
The verdict is in: I suck at this new game.
Growing up, my family moved house many times — five different schools in the first seven years of my schooling journey. It didn’t make for establishing lifelong friendships. It did, however, make for accumulating a collection of pen-pal friendships, fostering in me an eternal love of letter writing — this once beautiful art now just another wistful reminder of slower days replaced by the instant gratification of a technological world.
There are wonderful things, of course, that have morphed inside these transitional decades. The ability to communicate with anyone, anytime. A myriad of connections, many who live in different time zones — some we’ve met, most we haven’t. A lifetime of people and places we have gathered in our arms all held within the grasp of our hand. Online dating. The capacity to stalk those we would contemplate online dating — or so I’ve heard.
Our culture is reshaping, and no more so than in our social interactions. Where once the only communication with a friend was a letter in the mail, now endless digital messages demand our attention 24/7. We suffocate in the chaos of overcrowded inboxes; choke on the pressure of the instant reply, fear the repercussions of not giving an instant reply.
