I am a big believer in online relationships. Most of my relationships, friendships and otherwise, have been there. I even got engaged to someone I met online (though we did meet in person a couple times first).
However, it's not difficult at all to sort between shallow and deep social interactions. There's a massive difference between social media interactions and the interactions core to a deep relationship. I'll enumerate some examples here:
Social Media:
* Like
* Write short reply
* ...?
Meaningful relationship:
* Long talks (over phone, email, forums, whatever)
* Discussion of intimate topics (not suitable for the public space of social media!)
* Sharing experiences (and not in the "look what I did" sense of social media, but in the actually doing things together sense of, say, a gamer clan)
* Some semblance of shared beliefs or interests (the focus of a forum, perhaps)
So by all means let's continue building relationships online. But let's never confuse the shallow-as-possible interactions of social media with actually connecting to another human on any more than the most superficial level.
However, it's not difficult at all to sort between shallow and deep social interactions. There's a massive difference between social media interactions and the interactions core to a deep relationship. I'll enumerate some examples here:
Social Media:
* Like
* Write short reply
* ...?
Meaningful relationship:
* Long talks (over phone, email, forums, whatever)
* Discussion of intimate topics (not suitable for the public space of social media!)
* Sharing experiences (and not in the "look what I did" sense of social media, but in the actually doing things together sense of, say, a gamer clan)
* Some semblance of shared beliefs or interests (the focus of a forum, perhaps)
So by all means let's continue building relationships online. But let's never confuse the shallow-as-possible interactions of social media with actually connecting to another human on any more than the most superficial level.