Many people today have online friends, even if they rarely meet. In your opinion, how do online and more traditional face-to-face friendships compare?

In our ever-changing world, the rapid development of the internet and technological devices has recreated the way
people
connect with others, adding online
friendships
besides
traditional face-to-face ones.
This
essay will analyze these two kinds of
relationships
in terms of remarkable differences and similarities. On the one hand, it is unequivocal that online
friendships
differ from offline
friendships
regarding the diversity and intimacy aspects. With virtual rapports, there is an undeniably wide range of
friends
concerning nationality, language, or religion since advances in technology have made it more convenient to form international connections among
people
.
For example
, Asians can communicate with Europeans via popular social media sites
such
as Facebook despite the distance between them being half a world away. With traditional rapports,
however
, the variety of
friends
might be restricted
due to
the living environment.
For instance
,
people
usually tend to participate in face-to-face meetings held near their neighbours
instead
of putting great effort into travelling to totally different places to make new
friends
,
hence
having fewer chances to diversify their social networks.
Additionally
, intimacy is
also
a significant difference between these two types of
relationships
. Talking about cyber
friendships
,
people
seem to open up with strangers they meet through online websites much faster and more easily. It is obvious that social media provides a sense of anonymity which may make
people
more comfortable to share about personal information,
thus
helping
people
form close-knit
relationships
straightforwardly. Regarding real-life
friendships
, it is undoubted that these connections often require a lot of trust and intimacy in terms of physical interaction
along with
face-to-face contact on a regular basis in order to create truly strong bonds. As
people
are unable to hide their psyche or reputation when meeting others in person, they might affect the atmosphere of the meetings or the
relationships
.
On the other hand
, virtual and real-life
friendships
still share several similarities in which emotional risks appear to be the most considerable. Clearly, there is usually a high chance of
people
being emotionally hurt whenever they decide to have close bonds with strangers whether online or offline. Conflicts and falling-outs happen in almost every companionship, thereby, certain kinds of feelings might all be experienced by
people
in these
relationships
.
For example
, it is apparent that everyone might be distressed when encountering misunderstandings with their acquaintances. In conclusion, there are a number of similarities and dissimilarities between cyber and traditional friendship with regard to variety
as well as
attachment.
Therefore
,
people
should take these aspects into consideration when progressing their own circle of
friends
.
Submitted by phuonganh0609vn on

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