Making Friends Through the Internet

To communicate and make new friends indirectly, letters used to be the only methods in bygone day and many people are lazy to do so. With the advent of advanced technology on the Internet in recent year, the practice of writing a letter seems to take a leap a faith, however. The snowballing email-writer and the prevalence of MSN users are the obvious evidences of this drastic change. While we are enjoying the fruit of the technology, may we try to stop and think for a while; is it a favor or a trap?

To begin with, it is doubtlessly easier for you to express your feeling. Without face-to-face conversation, you can still communicate with each other. Especially if you are rather shy and quiet to speak in front of other people, you will be definitely benefited since it will be a rather comfortable way for you to make friends.

A further point to account for its wide use is the convenience it brings. It allows you to communicate at every time and everywhere. It probably eliminates the geographical difference between two countries. Therefore, for the people who need to work in foreign countries, they can still leave message to their family members and friends with no limitation. Even they can have a video phone call with them.

Besides the convenience brought, it can also broaden your perspective. On the Internet, you can learn different culture while you are communicating with people from different countries simultaneously. For instance, while you are chatting with Japanese, you may well get some ideas about their traditional clothing, cuisine, literature, to name but a few. It makes you understand more about the world.

It seems there are no lacks of benefits of using the Internet as a way of making friends and in all likelihood become a part of our life. As the old saying goes, however, “every sword has two sides.” While we frequently indulge, we should also start being alert hand heeding the downsides of blogs.

Firstly, it exists of potential danger which can seriously harm the netizens.
Internet fraud does frequently and commonly occur nowadays. There is always someone who wants to intentionally do something harm on you and netizens are too easy to fall in this trap. Recently, Hong Kong Police Force has announced that more than 1,400 internet frauds were reported in the past three quarter. There is a 40% increase compared to the previous record and with a loss on 240 million HKD.

Furthermore, it forms a communication barrier between the netizens. The intent of someone’s wording could be probably hard to determine over the Internet. The one on the other end of the Internet is likely to get misunderstood as they cannot hear the tone of other’s voice by just looking from the words. Therefore, it is necessary for sender to pay attention to their wording.

Last but not least, it will trigger degeneration of one’s language. Netizens usually use informal language while they are chatting to each other for convenience. After time being, they may develop a habit of using informal language and even abuse the language in many other work situations. It may be quiet arduous for them to give up the habit.

Actually whether making friends through the Internet is a boon or bane depends very much on the user. An unwise user will fall victim to the Internet fraud and bad relationship, whereas a clever person will remain vigilant and make good use of it. Who do you want to be – a unwise user or the smart person?