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Internet friends and the real world

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ledhendrix:

--- Quote from: Barmymoo on 03 Jun 2008, 13:33 ---My current vague hypothesis is that young people (a vague age group would be people between 16 and 30ish, since I can't interview anyone under 16) are more likely to make new friends via the internet, whilst older generations use it more to sustain existing, real life friendships.

--- End quote ---

I'm going to have to contradict that statement as well. I'm on a wild fishing forum and it is mostly people 30+ that are on it. Most of them are people that have never met before previously, but because fishing is an outdoor activity there are regular meet ups of people to fishing.  I even met up with one of them and had a great day out cause everyone on the forum is so fanatical about fishing. I think if people have something in common then no matter what age they are they are quite likely to meet up and do something.

fatty:
RE: internet relationships which don't leave the internet.

I think it is hugely influenced by the nature/origin of the social networks people interact on. Blogs, forums, irc and such are not as orientated towards 'meeting someone special' as say a hookup site might be. In those cases, it takes the right type of social group and individuals to forge personal relationships.

I'm totally excited about meeting people from QC, but would never feel comfortable meeting someone from somewhere more shady. Especially because i may have talked to them exhaustively on IM but never really known anything else about them. There are many on blogs who i would like to meet, but would be terribly nervous about. I can't really comment on online games though.

jhocking:

--- Quote from: pwhodges on 04 Jun 2008, 04:12 ---I know someone who makes money from a business conducted entirely within it

--- End quote ---

Now you know two!

Incidentally, thinking about Second Life in this context reminds me of a rather unusual story about internet people meeting up. One guy I knew in SL died a little while ago. He was Dutch, and a mutual friend of ours who lived in Amsterdam went to the funeral. They'd met a couple times in real life before the guy had a heart attack, but that still must have been extremely awkward for the family.

0bsessions:
I think your one problem with this study is that I think your demographic is a bit too broad. Sixteen to thirty encompasses bits of two very different generations and catches the outskirts of a third. I think you'd be better off with two separate groupings of 16 to 20 and 21 to 30.

Your hypothesis, to the best of my knowledge, is pretty true, I think.

I'm 24 and I kind of skirt the line. We got the internet when I was about thirteen and I've used it primarily for social networking. At this point, I use it both for making new friends and enjoying conversation with them just as much as I use it for keeping in touch with old friends that I haven't had the leisure of keeping in direct contact with due to the adult world getting in the way.

I, like Tommy, can remember a time before the internet. Hell, the internet still wasn't even a primary research tool until I was in High School. I remember back before the days of MySpace and Facebook, AOL chat rooms/message boards and LiveJournal were the big places to socialize. I still remember names and people from my AOL chatting days and I still occasionally correspond with one or two of them.

I've never actually had much experience with meeting folks in real life that I met online. I think I can actually count on two hands the total amount of people I've met from the internet, and three of them are on this forum (Shane I met through a Sox LJ community, we all know I met my girlfriend through here and I met Huda once, too). Aside from those three, I've met maybe three girls from online, one of which was a disaster that led to me getting briefly quasi-stalked, another I never saw again and the last I occasionally spot at concerts, but that's it.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I'd say meeting someone in real life validates the personal relationship in any way. I'd consider myself a lot closer with some gabblers and some people I knew from an old Marvel Comics chat I attended than I am with a lot of people I interact with personally and have known for more than a decade.

A more interesting idea to me is the effects of online socialization ON a person's non-internet social life. I've picked up a lot of mannerisms and in jokes from people I speak with online. Much of my behavior, attitude and overall personality has been directly influenced and molded by experience with people online (My snarky and rude attitude was heavily cultivated by my Marvel Comics chat). It's gotten to a point that my meat life and my internet life aren't what I'd consider mutually exclusive and I think that's where our society is going, if it's not there already. I think by the end of the decade, people won't differentiate between "my friend from the internet" and "my friend" anymore. That might not seem too impressive for some of the younger forumites, but for us old folks, that's a pretty radical leap from the way things were maybe seven years ago.

Barmymoo:
That's another good point I hadn't thought of, but I think you're right; my personality has definitely been slightly altered by being a member of these forums. I'm not sure how I can work it into the study but I'll have a think.

I haven't sorted the logistics of how I'll do the research yet; that group is too large really. Twenty-one is a good age to split at because ten years ago, when the internet was definitely taking off as a social tool, 21 year olds would have been just about the right age to start using it. From what people have been saying, it makes a difference whether or not the internet was around for a significant percentage of your life or not. Maybe that's what I really need to look at? Not age, but percentage of life with internet access? Might be more tricky.

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