opinion essay about online friendship

The Pros and Cons of Online Friendships

Are online friendships “real” friendships? It’s reasonable to suspect that online friendships would share some benefits of face-to-face friendships but not others, and several studies have put that idea to the test.

One study published last year by researchers from UC San Diego, Northeastern University, Harvard University, Yale University and … Facebook suggests that online social activity, like face-to-face interactions, is associated with better health and longer life expectancy.

It found that several types of social media activity were linked to reduced mortality. The strongest correlation was for activities like posting photos that were related to in-person social interactions. Activities unrelated to in-person interactions, like messaging, were associated with mortality non-linearly – that is, people who engaged in these activities in moderation were the least likely to die, with people who engaged the most and least frequently having higher mortality.

Online friendships can also provide a lifeline for people who struggle to find social support in real life. Different studies have found that online friendships have advantages for LGBT , deaf and hard of hearing , and lonely and socially anxious youth.

However, all adolescents can benefit from online social interactions. For example, one study found that online conversations contributed to teens’ sense of self-disclosure and belonging.

Still, it’s not good news across the board about online interactions. Perhaps unsurprisingly, prioritizing online friendships and spending more time communicating online has been linked to higher risk for internet addiction.

Altogether, these findings suggest that a healthy balance between online and offline social interactions is optimal. In the words of the authors who published the study looking at deaf and hard of hearing (“D/HH”) students’ online friendships:

A combination of the online and offline friendship seems to be the most important friendship type for both hearing and D/HH students and it is worthwhile to encourage this friendship type.

Image: Flickr/Meal Makeover Moms

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About Neil Petersen

It sure caught my attention when you said that online friendship is good for the health of the person because it gives the person an opportunity to make friends and receive support that they find hard having in real life. If that is true, then I guess there really is no reason for me to stop my sister from trying this online friendship thing. She finds it hard to make friends in real life, and if this will help her, then she should go for it. Thank you for sharing.

What Makes Online Friendships Work?

Getting close to new friends in a virtual world is easier than ever..

Posted October 10, 2015

There are three ways by which we typically find new friends. The first is propinquity, or proximity, to potential friends. The second path to new friendships is through involvement in shared activities. Lastly, life events, such as entering school or having a child, are the third path via which we find new friends.

Face-to-Face Relationship Factors

Research shows that we prefer friends we believe are similar to us and who have personalities that we enjoy; this decreases the possibility for interpersonal conflict. A potential friend’s level of attractiveness is relevant in the initial stages of friendship . Americans tend to be drawn towards beauty and we tend to believe that attractive people are more like us in their attitudes and values—regardless of where we actually rank ourselves in the world of beauty or style. This seemingly innate predilection for attractive people has been studied and some interesting things have turned up. For one, an attractive face will appear familiar to us, fostering a feeling that we have already interacted with the person before—even though we have not. This feeling of recognition may partly explain why we are initially drawn to attractive people—they may help us feel comfortable in social situations. It is still unproven whether attractive women actually have more friends than less attractive women; in fact, research suggests that we pretty much choose friends that we rank at the same level of attractiveness that we rank ourselves. We also prefer friends with strong social skills—this makes friendship development that much easier for both parties. Not only do healthy social skills facilitate a budding friendship, but research also reveals that when someone shares positive words with us, a feeling of familiarity arises within us. We are simply drawn to those people in whose presence we feel comfortable.

Friendship Development Speeds may Vary

Most often, friendships ease forward following a path of increasing closeness. Occasionally, though, friendships can materialize out of nowhere. This almost instant recognition of a like soul could be termed the “click factor,” and it’s been described as feeling as if a person has known someone for years even though they had just met. There are as many different personalities as there are individuals and friendships can develop between unlikely pairs. There are some friends with whom we “just click,” and we recognize early on that our personalities are a good match. In other situations, we may develop a friendship more slowly over time. Just as absence might make the heart grow fonder, continuing exposure may also bring familiarity and fondness. For the most part, we like predictable situations – change is never easy and most of us resist it whenever feasible. Thus, friendships between even unlikely pairs can materialize when routines result in sustained proximity.

Virtual Friendships that Grow Remarkably Close

Regarding individuals that you might only know through online interaction – whether it’s corporate contacts on the job or forum-friends on your favorite fan site, support site, or Pinterest site, you can generally check off all three factors: shared interests are what typically bring a person to a specific internet site. There is also a high likelihood for corresponding life events – such as the case for forums for expecting mothers, sufferers of a specific illness, and so on. It is very likely that you may never actually meet any of these folks face-to-face, but that does not hold back the sense of connection that is built.

More and more of us are developing online friendship groups and if someone ever stops to wonder about their own involvement and interest in the lives of their virtual buddies, it’s not too hard to understand how these relationships grow. You have found people who share your interests or engage in similar activities and the propinquity factor is off the charts! How much closer could we get to someone than to sit with them each evening over a cup of coffee or tea, glass of wine, or bottle of beer – in your own home, no less! Whether you carry your virtual social support network around in your pocket via your smart phone or hang out at Starbucks via your laptop, these wireless connections reflect the friendship building block basics regardless of how geographically divergent your paths might be.

How strong is your social support network? Do your friends and family help keep you healthy?

If you would like to take part in a new research study designed to explore the relationship between social support and overall well-being, please follow this link: https://niu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9Y2egoTAuVhT7bn

Suzanne Degges-White, Ph.D. , is a licensed counselor and professor at Northern Illinois University.

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Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Digital Communication — Making Real Friends on the Internet

Making Real Friends on The Internet

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Published: Sep 5, 2023

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Table of contents

The pros of online friendships, the cons of online friendships, fostering healthy online friendships, the future of online friendships, conclusion: navigating the digital realm.

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The value of online friendships and how they compare to 'real' friends

By Kellie Scott

• X (formerly Twitter)

There's a woman in Spain I've never met who has a lot of dirt on me — perhaps more than some of my "real" friends.

We met via Instagram two years ago after bonding over a hashtag and have been chatting ever since.

While I couldn't have predicted my inappropriate and mostly unfunny use of emojis would bring me close to a perfect stranger thousands of kilometres away, it's not an unusual relationship in 2019.

Most of us have online connections of some kind, and increasingly many that are exclusively virtual.

Are we placing too much value and trust in people we've never seen in the flesh? Or is a good mate online as valuable as those IRL?

Content — a new ABC vertical video series — explores this with its lead character Lucy Goosey, who experiences some of the tensions between online and offline friendships while chasing influencer fame.

I spoke to a couple of experts and someone in the same boat as me to get their take.

Why we love our online mates

Oversharing with my Instagram friend instead of friends IRL wasn't planned — it just kind of happened.

Lucy Good from the Sunshine Coast credits that to the availability of online mates.

The 44-year-old runs a Facebook page designed to support single mums, with 16,000 followers. To help run the page she recruited 14 women to help with the page admin.

Despite having never met them, Lucy's grown quite close to the group she calls her "admin sisters".

"We all want to support single mums which makes us quite similar," she says.

"And whereas we don't allow venting or man bashing in the group, when it comes to our little group, we're the first people we go to with our problems."

She says her internet friends are nearly always reachable.

"You have them there at your fingertips all the time," she says. "But it's also OK to leave the conversation and pick it up again when you're ready."

She describes the friendships as "very special" and lower maintenance than friends you need to physically see — it's all part of the appeal.

"You can just send a message out, if they are there, great. If not, it's fine. It's easier to maintain," she says.

"The only thing we miss is the contact, the intimacy of touch and cuddles, but we can make up for that by sending love heart emojis!"

Psychologist Leanne Hall says an element of anonymity online can make it easier to share parts of yourself you might otherwise find difficult.

"It means people can often open up a bit more," she says.

And there are many more connection options to find when using the internet.

Lucy says making friends online has taught her how to "connect differently and with different people".

"You are connecting to people you would perhaps not usually meet in real life … and that can be quite life-changing."

What's missing with online friendships?

Love heart emojis might make up for a lack of affection in Lucy's book, but what about all that other stuff physical connection brings?

Ms Hall says "in real life" you know a friend on a more emotional and connected level.

"You have the benefit of seeing body language and facial expression. A lot of how we communicate is non-verbal," she says.

Julie Fitness, professor of psychology at Macquarie University, agrees those lacking cues can make the friendship less rich. She adds you're relying on the person to "curate" an accurate representation of themselves.

"There are a lot of cues you can't share [online] like tone of voice, observing you interacting with your parents and other friends," Professor Fitness says.

"If it's exclusively online … you are curating the information you are communicating.

"You have an opportunity to put out your best self or only communicate things you are comfortable with."

How to make your online relationships meaningful

Be vulnerable, but careful

To help avoid only showing your best self, which can lead to a "shallow" connection, Ms Hall recommends being as open and honest as possible.

Don't just show the "highlight reel", she says.

"If you want a deeper connection online, it has to be a vulnerable connection, you need to be honest and embrace the fact that life is not perfect, and encourage the other person to do the same thing," Ms Hall says.

But make sure you trust who you're engaging before you get deep and meaningful.

"It might make sense to be more revealing and vulnerable [to build those online friendships], but you have to be so careful about who you're doing that with," Professor Fitness says.

"You can experiment with making yourself a bit vulnerable, and if there is disclosure in return and warmth and empathy, then the friendship may develop.

"Trust is a huge factor in online relationships because people can be deceived online ."

Choose people you share a common interest with

Finding friends online through an interest group will help set you up for success, explains Professor Fitness.

"You're more likely to meet someone as it's about sharing values and fun.

"This is why those online support groups can be really supportive [for example] because you know that people are understanding of your situation and they're warm and sympathetic to you."

And make sure they're as into the friendship as you are — there needs to be mutual interest and effort.

"A friendship you put as a seven out of 10 on your scale of closeness might be a nine out of 10 in the eyes of the person you are communicating with," Professor Fitness says.

Assess your needs and capacity to invest

Lucy says a real trap is biting off more than you can chew and consequently feeling drained or letting people down.

"There are many people who are isolated and wanting to connect, and if they see you are happy to be their friend they will jump at the chance," she says.

"Don't give them hope if you can't give them the time they deserve."

Professor Fitness says being on the same page about expectations and setting boundaries can help with this.

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Face-to-face connections still important

Ms Hall believes you can live without online friends, but you shouldn't live without those you can spend physical time with.

"The benefit of online comes in when they are in addition to real-life friendships, not instead of," Ms Hall says.

But research shows for people who are isolated , such as those living in regional areas or some older Australians, online connections can be a lifeline.

"The internet is really useful for keeping in touch with family and grandchildren," Professor Fitness says.

To be "really functional" though, you need both.

"You need the face-to-face friends, as well as the wider social networks," Professor Fitness says.

"When looking for a partner, for example, that's a really optimal time to have a rich and broad social network."

Lucy says it's important to support your online friends in the same way would any friend.

"Laugh and cry with them — you can still do that online. In that respect it's the same as a normal friendship."

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Excellent online friendships: an Aristotelian defense of social media

• Original Paper
• Published: 21 November 2014
• Volume 16 , pages 287–297, ( 2014 )

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• Alexis Elder 1  

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I defend social media’s potential to support Aristotelian virtue friendship against a variety of objections. I begin with Aristotle’s claim that the foundation of the best friendships is a shared life. Friends share the distinctively human and valuable components of their lives, especially reasoning together by sharing conversation and thoughts, and communal engagement in valued activities. Although some have charged that shared living is not possible between friends who interact through digital social media, I argue that social media preserves the relevantly human and valuable portions of life, especially reasoning, play, and exchange of ideas. I then consider several criticisms of social media’s potential to host friendships, and refute or weaken the force of these objections, using this conception of a distinctively human shared life. I conclude that we should use the shared life to evaluate features of social media and norms for users’ conduct.

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An Alternative Media Experience: LiveLeak

Social media effects on young women’s body image concerns: theoretical perspectives and an agenda for research.

Richard M. Perloff

Advances in Social Media Research: Past, Present and Future

Kawaljeet Kaur Kapoor, Kuttimani Tamilmani, … Sridhar Nerur

I thank Kai Kimppa for raising this point.

Thanks to Tobias Matzner for raising this objection, and for a fruitful discussion of possible responses.

The documentary Generation Like (Rushkoff, D. (Director), Public Broadcasting Service, 2014) vividly portrays some of the problematic situations that can arise between underage users and commercial social media providers.

Thanks to Olli Heimo for raising this question.

Thanks to Erica Neely for bringing up several issues about relationship dynamics online, which inspired this and the following section.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Randall J. Landau, Richard Volkman, Todd Mason, Katherine Fazekas, and Paul Bloomfield, for many fruitful conversations, both on- and offline, which gave rise to this paper, to two anonymous referees for ETHICOMP, and to the participants at ETHICOMP 2014, whose comments and questions proved enormously helpful. I also thank the SCSU students in my Spring 2014 course Ethics: Know Thyself, for their insightful observations and feedback on an early draft of the project, and Justin Grey for proofreading. Any remaining errors are, of course, mine alone.

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Elder, A. Excellent online friendships: an Aristotelian defense of social media. Ethics Inf Technol 16 , 287–297 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-014-9354-5

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Are Online And Real Life Friendships The Same? How The Internet Makes A Difference

The internet has been a part of mainstream culture for well over two decades now, and yet there is still a stigma towards online friends. With today’s technology, you can video chat with your friends with ease, talk to them from wherever you are, and have a digital bond that lasts. However, if your friend lives somewhere that you can’t travel to, you may wonder if that friend is as legitimate as a friend who lives nearby. The answer is yes. In this article, we’ll explain why.

Pros of having an online friend

Nowhere in the definition of the word “friend” does it indicate you must communicate in person. Online friendships are a wonderful part of many people’s lives. You can bond with someone from behind another screen, and sometimes the bond goes deeper than it does for your in-person friends – for several reasons.

Mutual interests

Forums make it easier to meet friends who share a common interest. Be it a political group, a blog dedicated to a certain fandom, a specific hobby, or many other commonalities, having a mutual interest is a great icebreaker. While you don't have to have everything in common with a friend, having shared interests is one way to spark a conversation.

Easier to break the ice

Perhaps the best thing about online communication is how easy it is to strike up a conversation. If you're introverted, shy, or just don't like talking to strangers, it's often hard to make that first move. On the internet, however, it's easier for most to make that first comment or send that first message. You can take time to write out exactly what you want to say. 

You can get to know them faster

Most people online are more comfortable with talking about themselves. They'll talk about their flaws, their mental illnesses, what they fear, and so on. In real life, it's hard to talk about some things without feeling like you're going to be laughed at. Due to the ease of online communication, you can often learn more about someone much faster than you can in real life.

You can make friends around the globe

Making friends with someone from a different part of the world can be a fun experience. You can find out more about their culture, and they can learn from you. Best of all, if you do get a chance to visit where they live, you may have a place to stay and someone to show you around. They might even be able to chip in for a plane ticket. For the traveler, having friends across the globe can be a good thing.

There are multiple ways to communicate

Communication doesn't have to be text-based. You can have video chats through your computer or phone. You two can walk around the town, talking to each other. It isn't a perfect replication of actually being there together, but it can be unique and fun. 

Cons of having an online friend

With that said, online friends have their disadvantages as well.

Hanging out is hard

Even if your online friend lives just a few hours from you, you're probably not going to visit them that often. You two have separate lives and arranging a meeting can be difficult – and costly. 

Miscommunication

Some forms of digital communication – like texting – can be misconstrued because body language and tone of voice are absent. You can use emojis, but they're not always helpful. Taking offense to a benign message is common. It can also be harder to get the hint that someone doesn't want to talk to you. Be patient and remember that miscommunications will happen. 

Harder to make up

If you're going to be friends with someone for a long time, you're probably going to get into disagreements at some point. With in-person friendships, you may get mad at each other for a while but then makeup – especially if the two of you have mutual friends. Sometimes, making up is the best option to keep the friend circle going.

With an online friend, however, it's easy for them to get mad, hit the block button, and then find another online friend, forgetting about you in the process. When you're blocked, it becomes difficult to try to reach them. It's also socially unacceptable to make another account and try talking to them. 

When communicating with an online friend, keep your cool if there is an argument. Don't reach for the block button. Take some time alone and talk again with a cool head. If you do hit the block button, remember you can always unblock.

They disappear

If you grew up online, you may have had an online friend who just disappeared. Maybe their account got hacked or the website you use to talk through is no more. Some people take breaks from social media, or tear down their accounts and rebuild them somewhere else. All it takes is a changed username to make reconnecting with an online friend difficult. It’s smart to get more contact info than just the social media site they're on. 

They may not be what they seem

If you're on a message board, exercise caution when making an online  friendship , especially if you're younger. You shouldn't accept an invitation to hang out with someone until you know for sure they're who they say they are.

Stay true to yourself

When making friends online, you want to stay true to yourself and what you want out of a friendship. You can find friends who reflect your interests and passions. It’s important to connect with people who will respect you and reflect your morals and values. When you’re finding friends – whether online or in real life – it’s okay to be picky. These are people who are here to support you. For them to know you well, you need to be real. 

New friendships are an exciting opportunity to show off your personality. When you make friends online, there are ways to show these individuals who you are through words, phone, or video chat. You don’t have to pretend you like something just to fit in. The whole point of making friends online is to find people whom you relate to who can enrich your life. 

The point of seeking people to chat with on the internet is to feel less alone. When you find friends online, you can tell them about what matters to you. Find friends online who care about your hobbies and can relate to you. Join some social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram to widen your options for connecting with others. There are also groups you can join where people have similar interests to you. Think about what’s important to you, and look at ways to connect with others. There’s a platform to make friends for everyone!

Be safe online

It’s exciting to have online friends, but don’t get carried away, it’s important to be  safe . Be careful not to reveal information about yourself too soon. When meeting new friends online, find ones who are slow to open up and don’t just blurt out all their personal details. Be safe, and take your time revealing who you are. You don’t want to tell anyone where you live or work until you get to know them well. You don’t want people showing up at your door because you told them your address.

If you meet new friends, focus on your personality. See what your friends start revealing to you and build off these facts. In a way, it’s like “friend dating.” You’re testing out who you want to get close to, and which relationships to foster or let go. You’re going online to find people who you can talk to, and be emotionally vulnerable with, but that feeling comes with time. Like any friendship, trust takes time. You want to find new friends online who seem trustworthy. Let them earn that trust. 

What to look for in an online friendship

Friendships take time to develop. You want to look for somebody who genuinely is interested in you, and you are curious about them. Someone who is genuinely interested in being your friend will ask you questions about your interests and your life. 

When making friends with people you can't see in person, pay attention to the words they use; they matter. You want to read what they're telling you and take those statements at face value. The stories and reflections they impart about their real-life friendships will show you what sort of person they are. If they're loyal, it will come across. 

Another thing you can do is talk about yourself and see how they respond. Do they want to know more? Pay attention to the way a friend you're interested in talks to you. By being observant when you're meeting friends, you can learn a lot about them. 

Once you get to know each other and you're regularly conversing, how do you know if your online friend cares about you? You can gauge that by how often you speak to each other, what you talk about, and if they're there for you during rough times. When you find new friends online, it's crucial to have high standards for them. You deserve to be treated with respect and cared for in friendships. 

If you open up to your buddies on the internet during hard times and they're responsive, that's a good sign. That means they care for you. If you feel positive in the friendship, go with that instinct. If something is off, follow your gut there too. When you meet new friends online, they should align with what you want in life and care about you as a human being.

Getting help

While it is often easier to connect with people online compared to in person, it can still be unnerving. While many people online are nice, depending on the forum, there are also “keyboard cowboys” and cyberbullies whose main goal online is to argue and belittle other people. Other people have social anxiety disorder, which makes it extra difficult to strike up a conversation with someone new, sometimes even online.

A professional relationship counselor through Regain can help you navigate your friendships. They can also help with issues like social anxiety disorder or cyberbullying 

If you have a hard time connecting with others, one of the most important steps that you can take is to reach out to a counselor.  Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is a popular method of psychotherapy that has been found to help individuals with social anxiety, depression, and many other mental health concerns. CBT helps you learn new ways of behaving, thinking, and responding to social situations, as well as helping to build self-confidence . 

Studies have found that Internet-based CBT (iCBT) is usually just as effective as in-person therapy, which can make it easier for individuals who have social anxiety, as well as for those wanting to practice their online communication skills. Online counseling with Regain lets you find a professional relationship therapist without having to leave the comfort of your home, and they can work around your schedule, not vice versa.  

When you're talking to friends in a new setting, such as a social media platform or chatroom, you may not know what to expect. That's natural, but try to relax and be yourself. If you need help maneuvering through online friendships or working through mental health concerns like social anxiety, an online Regain counselor can help. Reach out today. 

Frequently asked questions (FAQs) about online friends

Do online friends count as real friends? If you're reading this, it's likely that you talk to people online or have talked to someone online at least once. When you meet people on the internet, you might be seeking a sense of support or connection. Maybe, you're about to move to a new area, and you're looking for friends online who are in the location you're moving to. Perhaps, you play games online and have met friends through gaming. If you're wondering, "Are online friends real?" the answer is yes. Online friends absolutely count as real friends. It doesn't matter where you met; it's the social-emotional connection that counts. You may start out with digital communication and move on to hanging out in person, or you may take a while to meet due to distance. Either way, online friendships can be special and unique connections. How to make friends is different for everybody. For some, it comes naturally whereas for others, it's a conscious effort, and both are completely valid.

Why are real friends better than online friends? Again, it's not where you meet that makes friends real. Many people meet their online friends face-to-face and establish connections with them offline. Whether you met someone in high school, at a social event, or online, you can have long-term associations with them that amplify your mental health and quality of life overall. Nothing beats having a true friend that you know will be there for you and that you can trust. Of course, before you consider online friends real friends, you have to make sure that they are who they say they are and establish trust. Online friendships are becoming more and more common, and people meet people online in person every day. Online friendships were once kept on the down-low or shunned and were regarded as separate from in-person friendships, but times are changing, and most people have at least one friend that they met digitally before engaging with one another face to face. There is something special about talking to people face to face and hanging out in person. In fact, it's irreplaceable, and it's important for your mental health to have social support that exists offline. That said, it's necessary to remember that for some, online connections become face-to-face connections. Don't discount someone's friendship if they meet a person online because that person could mean a lot to them.

Is having online friends bad? Having online friends isn't bad as long as you go about it safely. If you're wondering what makes online friends real, it is partially the social-emotional connection you have and partially verifying that they are who they say they are. Before you make online friends real friends, make sure to video chat and talk on the phone. Be sure to always bring someone with you when you meet people that you've only had digital communication with so far in person.

Are online friends healthy? Having online friends is certainly healthy as long as the internet does not become your whole life. Online friendships can be unique in the sense that you are likely to bond over things that you have in common rather than your geographical location. Of course, having friends in real life is extremely important, but sometimes the people that you meet in person initially won't always have the same interests. For example, if you are interested in mental health, you might meet people through mental health groups online. If you're interested in travel, astrology, or another niche, you might also meet people online who are into those things. It is essential to have social support from people who truly understand you, and of course, you can always meet your online friends in real life eventually. Some are more extroverted than others, but even introverts need friends and experience health advantages from social connections.

Why is making friends online bad?

Making friends online is not bad, but it is essential to be safe about it. Often, when people criticize online friendships, the main part of the problem they see is the potential safety issues affiliated with meeting someone online. This is a valid concern, but there are measures to take. Be sure to talk to people you meet online through video chat before you meet up. Meet in a public place and bring someone with you. Online friendships aren't just made by adults, so it is important to be aware of the potential that your teenager might make friends online whether you know about it or not.

Many teens report having one or more online friendships or friends that they initially met online. If you are the parent of a teen who makes friends online, it is understandable and unavoidable that you will be concerned. Your concern is valid. When a teenager wants to find a way to meet an online friend in person, it's hard to stop them. One of the things you can do is support them and accompany them when they meet an online friend for the first time. That way, you can avoid the possibility that they might sneak out or do something equally as unsafe so that they can meet a person from the internet. You can join us at the mall or in a café. Public places are always your best bet, and you don't have to make things awkward. Just be there for the first meeting, and if possible, get to know the person's parents. Likely, the parents of your teenager's friend will want to attend their first in-person meeting as well, so you can talk to them before meeting up, and they can accompany you, your teen, and your teen's friend when they meet in person.

How long do online friendships last?

When you meet a friend online, it may be the start of a friendship that lasts for the rest of your life. As with any friendship, there is the potential to stray apart, but there is also the possibility of a lifelong connection. When you make online friends real-life friends by meeting in person, this can become especially true. Remember that there are real people behind the screen, and that's part of what makes online friends real. This is part of why it is so important to be kind to the people you meet online. You never know who is going through tough times, and the words you say to people both in real life and online matter. Cyberbullying is an extremely serious issue to be wary of when you talk to people online or if you know that your kids are talking to people online. Being on high alert when it comes to this kind of thing is crucial, but it doesn't make all online friendships unhealthy, nor does it make them invalid.

Think about online dating. Some people start dating individuals that they met over the internet and end up getting married. Couples that meet online can get married and stay together for the rest of their lives in some cases. Relationships can go bad whether they begin online or in person, but they can also be exceptional. The same is true for online friendships.

Can you trust online friends? It's important not to trust people online too quickly. You can trust online friends once you meet them in person and confirm that they are who they say they are. Again, it's essential to take someone with you and stay safe when you meet an online friend in person. Video chat can be a place to start when it comes to making virtual connections real. Using video chat, you can see people's facial expressions and hear their voice, making everything feel more authentic. It can take time to develop trust in any friendship, but that's especially true for online friendships due to the possibility that you may come across someone who isn't who they say they are in any capacity from time to time. Trust will build over the course of months or years when you have phone calls, move onto video chat, and meet up in person. Once you've met someone in person in a safe manner, your bond can become even stronger. Meeting online friends in person for the first time is a joyful moment for a ton of people, and as long as you take every safety precaution possible, making virtual connections can be the start of a long, healthy friendship.

Who are real friends? Notice how easy for you to say "I love my family. I love my friends ." Real friends are like your family that you can count on. They make you feel good. Social connections are positive for your mental health, and being around someone who is a real friend will generally be uplifting. A true friend should give you a sense of support. When we talk about a support system, we often think of friends, family, and possibly, a mental health professional or multiple mental health providers. A real friend is therefore you through tough times and pleasant times alike and enhances your life.

What do online friends do online friends talk via web chat, phone calls, video chat, and more. sometimes, online friends will play games together remotely. they may chat or meet on web forums. when you meet a friend online, the eventual goal is often to establish a connection in person. you may text each other throughout the day or talk on social media, and if you live near the same area, you might meet up..

What is the difference between a real friendship and an online friendship?

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How to Make Friends On the Internet

• Sulagna Misra

Some of the greatest friendships have started with a retweet.

The internet is deeply interwoven into our everyday lives. More and more people are using social media to share their work, explore the work of others, and even make meaningful friendships. Here are some dos and don’ts for (safely) making friends online:

• Do: Choose the platforms and communities that you care about. Don’t: Be everywhere.
• Do: Be kind and compassionate. Don’t be super honest (like in a mean way).
• Do: Connect with people you like. Don’t: Connect with everyone — especially the haters.
• Do: Build on connections that bring out your best. Don’t: Engage with people who bring out your worst.
• Do: Be open to making plans to hangout online or in-person. Don’t: Think that because this is someone you met online, the friendship isn’t important.

Where your work meets your life. See more from Ascend here .

Have you ever made a friend online?

• SM Sulagna Misra is a freelance writer who has written for  Vanity Fair, Elle, GQ, Nylon, The Toast, New York Magazine,  and  many more publications . She has worked for companies such as GoFundMe and Netflix, among others. You can follow her on Twitter @sulagnamisra .

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OPINION: Online friends are a form of modern connection, not something to be hostile towards

Rickie Thayer | December 13, 2019

Olive Howden

Online friendship often gets stigmatized as being dangerous.

Everyone looks for something different in a friendship, whether it’s emotional support, a partner in their endeavors, or simply positive human interaction.

Modern technological advancements paved the way for new methods of communication, bringing new types of friendships, such as friends online. Online friendships are good since they are often just as strong as face-to-face relationships.

An online friendship is exactly what is sounds like: a sense of camaraderie between people in which all social interactions happen through internet platforms. Despite likely not ever getting to meet in person, the bonds between online friends can be resilient and rewarding.

Because communication occurs through technology, different circumstances are created, allowing online friends to be there for each other when in-person friends cannot. For example, if somebody finds themself in a delicate social situation, internet friends can be an emotional safety net, even when someone feels that everyone else is against them.

An online friend can also be a good person to blow off steam to. If a person is struggling with offline problems, online friends may be the only people who can listen.

Due to their detachment from in-person social circles, sharing secrets with online friends is often safer. There is significantly less incentive for online friends to share those secrets with other people.

Seeking internet friendships can also help people who are queer, have disabilities or a unique identity feel less isolated in their struggles. The vastness of the internet results in thriving online communities where people can reach out to support groups, find friends and make meaningful connections, which can result in long-lasting and fulfilling friendships.

Unfortunately, the anonymity of the internet makes it easy for someone to lie about their identity and mask their ill intent. Truthfully, people need to be cautious about sharing their personal information to people they aren’t familiar with. All kinds of people lurk online, not just kind-hearted and supportive people. Anyone can say almost anything online, so just like face to face friendships, it is necessary for a person thinking of befriending someone online to ensure that a potential friend is not a harmful individual. Friendship by nature is mutually beneficial, and online friendships are no exception.

Despite potential risks, befriending someone through the internet can be a rewarding and valuable experience for all of the positive aspects it boasts.

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Comparing the Happiness Effects of Real and On-Line Friends

John f. helliwell.

1 Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Haifang Huang

2 Department of Economics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Conceived and designed the experiments: JFH HH. Analyzed the data: JFH HH. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: JFH HH. Wrote the paper: JFH HH.

A recent large Canadian survey permits us to compare face-to-face (‘real-life’) and on-line social networks as sources of subjective well-being. The sample of 5,000 is drawn randomly from an on-line pool of respondents, a group well placed to have and value on-line friendships. We find three key results. First, the number of real-life friends is positively correlated with subjective well-being (SWB) even after controlling for income, demographic variables and personality differences. Doubling the number of friends in real life has an equivalent effect on well-being as a 50% increase in income. Second, the size of online networks is largely uncorrelated with subjective well-being. Third, we find that real-life friends are much more important for people who are single, divorced, separated or widowed than they are for people who are married or living with a partner. Findings from large international surveys (the European Social Surveys 2002–2008) are used to confirm the importance of real-life social networks to SWB; they also indicate a significantly smaller value of social networks to married or partnered couples.

Introduction

There are constant changes in the types of activities that people engage in, and in the technologies they use to establish and enjoy their social connections. For example, Robert Putnam’s analysis of movements in social capital in the United States over the 20th century showed that memberships in most US organizations, the frequency of dinner parties, league bowling, and many other types of social connection grew for the first 70 years of the 20th century and declined thereafter [1] . Some commentators and researchers argued that there were new types of social connection, possibly more effective in nature, that were growing and possibly offsetting the effects of declines elsewhere. One of the key examples offered was the substitution of on-line for face-to-face (we use this term interchangeably with ‘real-life’) friendships. The internet could thereby be seen as providing ways of enhancing or replacing face-to-face friends through the availability of on-line social networks.

How can the effects of these differing trends be compared? To judge the importance and value of differing forms of friendship requires a common basis for valuation. The broadening availability of data for subjective well-being offers one possible solution to this valuation problem. If it were possible to measure each individual’s network of on-line and real-life friends, then their respective contributions to subjective well-being could provide a way of comparing their values, and hence to judge whether the quality of social networks as a whole was growing or shrinking. Only very recently has there been a survey that provided comparable measures of networks of face-to-face and on-line friends, set in the context of a well-being survey of sufficient size and scope to permit comparable assessments of the two types of friends.

Literature Review

Friends and family are a long-established support for subjective well-being. Friends matter to happiness both for being potential sources of social support and for the pleasures from time spent together, whether at work, at play, or in activities for the benefit of others. Data from the Gallup World Poll suggest that having someone to call on in times of trouble is associated with a life evaluation that is higher, on a 0 to 10 scale, by almost half a point (page 298 in [2] ). This is more than the equivalent of increasing household incomes by 150%. There is also a dose-response relationship, so that having more friends is better than having fewer. Evidence from the Canadian General Social Survey shows that, compared to respondents having no close friends, to have 3 to 5 close friends is associated with life satisfaction 0.24 points higher on a 10-point scale, an amount that rises to.32 for those with 6 to 10 close friends, and to 0.43 points for those with more than 20 close friends [3] . Also notable is that happiness depends not just on the number of close friends, but also the frequency with which they are seen [3] , [4] . The same survey also asks about the number of close relatives, and the frequency with which they are seen. An interesting difference appears between friends and family. The number of close family matters more than the number of close friends, about twice as much up to 15 in number, with no gain thereafter, while frequency of seeing family contributes only half as much as the frequency of seeing close friends [3] . A similar result is found in US and other Canadian data analyzed by [5] , where it is shown that the frequency of seeing friends adds twice as much to subjective well-being as does the frequency of seeing family. The US and Canadian surveys in [5] also reveal a strong relation between subjective well-being and the frequency of seeing friends, with those seeing friends most frequently having subjective well-being higher by 0.5 points on a ten-point scale.

All of these results are based on fully specified models with many other control variables, although there is no doubt likely to be some remaining element of mutual causality between subjective well-being and the frequency of seeing friends. For example, those who are at the bottom end of the subjective well-being scale, and especially those who are clinically depressed, often reduce the extent to which they reach out to friends. Indeed social withdrawal is a key element in the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) [6] , as supported in subsequent factor-analytic work by [7] . Thus some of the strong positive linkages between friends and happiness may reflect causal influences running in both directions. This is likely to apply for both real-life and on-line friends, and hence should not affect our comparisons in this paper between these two types of friends.

There are few studies of the linkages between on-line friendships and subjective well-being. One study [8] found a positive relation between subjective well-being and number of Facebook friends among a sample of 391 college-age subjects. Another study of college-age respondents in the United States, while not directly investigating the links between Facebook usage and subjective well-being, did find evidence that Facebook usage was correlated with proxy measures of social capital, but only for those with relatively low levels of satisfaction with campus life [9] . An earlier study of social capital and internet usage in a sample of US adolescents [10] found no significant relation between subjective well-being and time spent on-line. Those who spent more time messaging with close real-life friends were happier. Conversely, the relation between on-line time and subjective well-being was negative for those in contact with strangers or purely on-line friends. A recent study of Egyptian students found no significant relation between life satisfaction and intensity of Facebook usage [11] .

Although there are many studies showing the effects of marital status on subjective well-being, we have not found previous attempts to see if the happiness effects of either real-life or on-line friends differ by marital status. Using two different surveys, we look for, and find, a large interaction effect in the happiness effects of marital status and real-life friends, but no significant differences for the effects of on-line friends.

We think that our results are the first to compare the happiness effects of real-life and on-line friends. Hence there are no directly comparable prior studies. Based on a meta-analysis [12] of fifty years of studies showing significantly more effective cooperation in conflict resolutions using face-to-face rather than written communications, we might conjecture that a similar difference might exist to differentiate the happiness effects of real-life and on-line friends.

Data and Summary Statistics

The primary dataset for the paper is the 2011 Happiness Monitor survey sponsored by Coca-Cola and conducted in Canada between January 20 and 31, 2011 by Leger Marketing, using their online panel LegerWeb. The sample includes 5,025 Canadian residents, aged 16 and over, drawn from all ten Canadian provinces. The survey focuses on subjective well-being, and has questions that cover self-evaluation of life and other questions that can be used to construct alternative measures of well-being. It also has questions on people’s opinions about how various elements in life contribute to happiness. A section called Canadiana has occasionally light-hearted questions such as what is the happiest job in Canada, with a list that includes Zamboni driver and lumberjack.

From our perspective, the most interesting questions (other than the ones on well-being) are those on the size of social networks, separately for real-life friends and on-line friends. This presents an opportunity for us to examine potential differences between these two types of networks, specifically in their contributions to subjective well-being.

We use regression analysis to relate measures of subjective well-being to the sizes of social networks, as well as income and demographic controls. We will also use control variables to pick up differences in personalities; such variables include self-reported stress, time spent exercising and contributions to charitable causes.

The survey’s primary measure of subjective well-being is an 11-point (from 0 to 10) life ladder , based on the question “Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?” This question, also known as Cantril’s Self-Anchoring Ladder, is frequently used in well-being studies, including the recent World Happiness Report [13] and many studies cited therein. We plot the distribution of sample responses in the first panel of Figure 1 . The mode is “7” with a quarter of the respondents. The next greatest concentration is “8” with about 20% of the responses. The sample mean is 6.8, significantly lower than for the Canadian ladder responses in the Gallup World Poll, as shown in figure 2 .3 of the World Happiness Report.

It is possible to construct two other measures of well-being from the survey. One is life satisfaction, based on the four-point responses to the question “To what extent do you agree with each of the following statements” that include a statement “I am satisfied with my life”. The four points are “strongly agree”, “somewhat agree”, “somewhat disagree” and “strongly disagree”. The second panel of Figure 1 shows the distribution. The mode, covering more than 50% of the responses, is “somewhat agree”. Another potential measure is the response to the question “How happy are you at the beginning of 2011? Very happy, somewhat happy, somewhat unhappy, very unhappy.” The distribution of happiness is similar to that of life satisfaction: the third step “somewhat happy” has more than 50% of the sample. We will use these two measures of well-being for robustness tests.

There is also a question on the level of stress, specifically the response to the question “How would you rate your average daily stress levels? Very low, Low, Medium, High, Very high.” Its distribution is shown in the last panel of Figure 1 . The response of “Medium” has the greatest share of responses at 40%.

We now move on to the two questions on social networks. The first question concerns real-life friends. The exact wording is “How big is your real-life social network of friends?” The permitted responses, unless the respondents refuse to answer, include “Less than 10 friends”, “Between 10 and 20 friends”, “Between 20 and 30 friends”, “Between 30 and 50 friends”, and “More than 50 friends”. The distribution of the network size is shown in the upper panel of Figure 2 . A large majority of the sample, almost 80%, is in the first two categories (i.e., with fewer than 20 friends).

The immediately next question in the survey concerns online friends: “How big is your online social network?” The responses include “I don't have an online social network”, “Less than 100”, “Between 100–300”, “Between 300–500”, “Between 500–700” and -Greater than 700”. The distribution is shown on the lower panel of Figure 2 . A large majority of the sample either has no online friends (about 25%) or have fewer than 100 of them (about 50%).

The two network questions have different numbers of steps, and both have some steps with sparse responses (see Figure 2 ). We correct for these problems by combining the top two categories of real-life network into one single category with 11% of the sample, and the top three categories of online network into one category with 9% of the sample. This way, we turn the two network sizes into a comparable scale of four steps. In the case of real-life network, the four categories are “less than 10”, “10–20”, “20–30” and “30 or more”, with 44%, 34% 11% and 11% of the sample, respectively. The size of online network falls into “0”, “1–100”, “100–300”, “300 or more”, with 23%, 50.8%, 17.6% and 8.6% of the sample, respectively.

Table 1 presents summary statistics of other variables. The average age is 45. Forty-five percent (45%) of the sample are married; 15% in common-law relation, 5% dating, 23% single; the remaining 12% are divorced, separated, widowed or are unknown. The income information is based on categorical responses of income intervals. We estimate the midpoint of each interval under the assumption that income follows a log-normal distribution. We then assign respondents in each interval the corresponding midpoint estimate. The categories for the income variables are “$20,000 and below”, “$20,001 to $35,000”, “$35,001 to $50,000”, “$50,001 to $75,000”, “$75,001 and $110,000” and “more than $110,000”. The estimated midpoints are $13,605, $27,073, $41,895, $60,345, $87,895 and $136,849 respectively. About 15% of the sample did not provide income information. We use a dummy variable to indicate such a status in the regression analysis. Among those that have valid income information, the sample mean is $51 thousand. The average time spent on moderate to high intensity exercising is 1.78 hours per week. Close to 60% of survey respondents indicated that they currently volunteer or give time or money to charitable causes.

A second dataset that we use is the European Social Survey (ESS), a biennial cross-sectional survey of residents aged 15 and over within private households that is “designed to chart and explain the interaction between Europe's changing institutions and the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour patterns of its diverse populations” (The European Social Survey project). We use the cumulative file for rounds 1–4 (2002, 2004, 2006, 2008) that has 34 participating countries. The ESS does not have information relating to online social networks. Instead, it has information on survey respondents’ frequency of socially meeting with friends, relatives or colleagues. Figure 3 plots the distribution of the frequency, in the categories of “Never”, “Less than once a month”, “Once a month”, “Several times a month”, “Once a week”, “Several times a week” and “Every day”.

The ESS has two alternative measures of SWB, happiness and life satisfaction. The two underlying questions are “Taking all things together, how happy would you say you are?” and “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole nowadays?”. Both SWB measures are on a 11-point ascending scale from 0 to 10, with 0 indicating extremely unhappy/dissatisfied and 10 indicating extremely happy/satisfied. Figure 4 plots the distributions. Table 2 presents summary statistics of other variables.

By covering many different countries, adopting a different way of measuring interactions with friends, and by having additional measures of subjective well-being, the ESS increases the power and generality of our findings about the happiness effects of real-life friends.

Regression Analysis

Our regression analysis estimates the following equation

The measure of life ladder is ordinal; but as commonly found in the literature, little is lost if we treat it as cardinal. For example, [14] reported that the choice between probit regressions, which treats dependent variables as ordinal, and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), which treats dependent variables as cardinal, makes virtually no difference to the estimated relationships between happiness and important explanatory variables. In this paper, we will present results from the method of OLS; Ordered Probit estimations yield qualitatively similar findings. In terms of quantitative evaluations, our discussions will be based largely on the concept of compensating differentials: we will compare the estimated effects of social networks to the estimated effects of income. The ratios of coefficients are almost invariant to the choice of regression methods, as switching between OLS and Ordered Probit affects estimated coefficients almost proportionally (see [15] for an example).

The variables of interest on the right-hand side are the sizes of social networks in real life and on-line. In both cases, the size information is based on categorical choices from a set of intervals (the distributions are shown in Figure 2 ). We enter the size information into the regressions in two different ways. The first approach uses a set of dummy variables to indicate the intervals. This avoids making assumptions regarding the functional form of the relationships between network sizes and subjective well-being. The second approach imposes an assumption that the relationship is log-linear. To implement the log-linear approach, we turn the intervals into continuous values by assigning the midpoint of an interval to observations in that interval. In the case of real-life friends, the category “Less than 10 friends” is assigned a value of 5, the category “Between 10 and 20 friends” receives a value of 15, and so on. The top category “More than 50 friends” is assigned a value of 60. Similarly, we assign continuous values to the size of online network by assigning zero to the category “I don’t have an online social network”, the value of 50 to “Less than 100”, the value of 200 to “Between 100–300”, and so on. The top category “Greater than 700” receives a value of 800.

Table 3 shows the regression output. In all columns, the dependent variable is the 0–10 point life ladder. In the first column, we enter the network sizes as a set of categorical variables. In the second column, the network sizes are in (logged) continuous values. The first two columns show the happiness effects of real-life and on-line friends without the inclusion of other variables. In columns (3) and (4) we add a full set of control variables to be described below, and in columns (5) and (6) we further test the robustness of our findings by adding a measure of psychological stress.

Columns (1) and (2) provide the simplest and starkest evidence that real-life and on-line friends have very different associations with subjective well-being. Whether measured as categories or as continuous variables, real-life friends are positively associated with happiness, while on-line networks have a negative relationship. The strong positive effects of real-life networks are consistent with much other research. The strong negative effects of on-line friends are more surprising. The difference between the two effects is striking. Because the size and nature of friendships is likely to be correlated with age, gender, marital status, income and other variables, we shall do our main analysis of results using columns (3) and (4), which confirm our first results showing sharply differing effects of real-life and on-line friends, but largely eliminate the estimated negative effects of on-line networks.

The estimated effects of the newly added control variables are largely consistent with the literature. As commonly found, there is a positive and statistically significant income effect. The estimates of the effect are largely invariant across specifications, and suggest that doubling income ( i.e. , an increase of logged income by 0.7 unit) increases the life ladder by about 0.3. Later we will use this estimate as a benchmark to evaluate the quantitative importance of social networks. In term of genders, male respondents tend to report a lower evaluation of life. There is a U-shape relationship between age and life ladder: the life ladder falls as age rises but makes a U-turn in the 40 s. In terms of marital status, the happiest respondents are those who are in a relationship (married, common-law, or dating). The least happy group, which we use as the reference group, includes those who are divorced, widowed or separated. The group of non-dating singles lies in between. The difference between singles and the in-relationship groups is substantial, equivalent to the impact of increasing logged income by an entire unit. There is a strong negative effect associated with being unemployed, a positive effect associated with exercising and volunteering time or money for charitable causes. The estimated coefficients on the educational variables turn out largely insignificant, likely because the control variables already include measure of household income and social-context variables that are correlated with education.

The sizes of social networks enter columns (3) and (5) in Table 3 as categorical variables of intervals. The reference groups that are left out are those that have the smallest networks, specifically “less than 10” in the case of real-life friends and zero in the case of online friends. The estimated effects of real-life friends are all statistically significant and quantitatively substantial. Compared to the group that has fewer than 10 friends, the estimates in column (3) suggests that having 10–20 friends increases the life ladder by 0.29 points, equivalent to the improvement associated with a 0.7 unit of logged income (or 100% increase of income). Compared to the same reference group, having 20–30 friends increases the ladder by 0.32 points, while having more than 30 friends increases the evaluation by 0.36. The estimates thus suggest a substantial non-linearity in the relationship between network sizes and well-being. The most substantial increase in well-being occurs when moving from the group of “less than 10” to the group of “10 to 20”. The marginal contribution beyond that is quite small. Columns (4) and (6), which treat network sizes as continuous values, also show positive and significant coefficients. The variable of network size is expressed in logarithms. The coefficient estimate is 0.19, equivalent to the well-being gain from a 0.44 rise increase in logged income. Doubling the number of real-life friends is equivalent to increasing income by more than one half.

The findings for on-line networks are strikingly different from those for real-life friends. Compared to the reference group that has no on-line network at all, having a greater number of on-line friends is not associated with a higher level of life ladder. If anything, the correlation is negative, generally not significant at the 95% confidence level. Column (4) uses logged continuous values to express the size of networks. In such a specification, the estimated effect from the online network is negative and significant, although it is quantitatively small (doubling the number of online friends has the equivalent effect of reducing income by 10%).

The regressions described above estimate the effect of the online social network while controlling for the size of real-life network. Given the positive correlations between online networks and real-life networks (the correlation coefficient is 0.25), we expect the coefficients for online networks size to become more positive if we remove the variables for real-life networks from the regressions. We performed this test using the equation of column (3), and it did indeed make the coefficients on online network size less negative, but they still maintain a negative sign throughout (though none of them has statistical significance at the 95% level).

The final two columns of the table add to the right-hand side of the regressions an extra variable: the self-reported level of daily stress. The inclusion of the stress variable increases the r-squared substantially (from 17% to 24%), but has little impact on the estimated effects of network sizes; nor does it change the contrast between the two types of network. These findings reinforce our earlier point that omitted variables, including those correlated with personality, will not put our conclusions at risk as long as their inclusion does not alter the key coefficients, and especially the relative impact of on-line and real-life friends. The equations adding stress thus provide additional evidence of the robustness of our results.

The next table, or Table 4 , uses the four-step life satisfaction and happiness answers as alternative dependent variables. For better comparability with the 0–10 point life ladder, we rescale the two variables so that they, too, have zero for the lowest level of satisfaction/happiness and 10 for the highest level. The estimates are similar to those from the estimations based on the life ladder. Real-life networks are important to satisfaction and happiness, while online networks are largely irrelevant. The biggest difference is that the estimated effect of real-life friendship is even greater for happiness and life satisfaction than for the life ladder. In the case of life ladder in Table 3 , doubling the number of real-life friends has the same effect as increasing income by more than one-half (exp.44 = 1.55). For life satisfaction, doubling the number of friends is equivalent to a doubling of income (exp.69 = 1.99), while for happiness it has the same effect as a trebling of income (exp 1.12 = 3.06).

Next, we split the sample into two subgroups: one includes respondents who are married or in a common-law relationship; the other includes the rest of the sample. This is to compare the importance of friendship and social networks in the two segments of the population. Our earlier results have already shown that both marriage and real-life friends contribute importantly to subjective well-being, and by somewhat comparable amounts. Our results also show that those who are single but dating are almost as happy as those who are living together, once again suggesting the importance of the social aspects of co-habitation.

Table 5 presents the split-sample estimates. Its first two columns use the life ladder as the dependent variable, while the other four apply to life satisfaction and happiness, respectively. For each of the alternative dependent variables, one column shows estimates from the married/partnered sample; the other shows estimates from the rest of the sample. The findings regarding social networks are similar across the measures of SWB. The sizes of on-line networks are largely statistically insignificant for both subgroups. The real-life networks, in contrast, have positive and generally significant effects on SWB; but there is a stark contrast between the married/partnered respondents and the rest of the sample. Real-life networks have greater effects for people who are not married/partnered. The estimated differences are substantial. In the case of life ladder, the estimated contribution of having more than more than 30 friends is 0.72 in the un-married/partnered sample; the standard error is 0.18. In contrast, the estimated contribution is only 0.14 for people who are married or in a common-law partnership; the standard error is 0.14. There is thus no overlap in the 95% confidence intervals of the two estimates. Regressions using the alternative measures of SWB show a similar pattern of difference, with real-life networks being significantly more valuable for people who are not married or in a common-law partnership. Finally, we note that when we separate the married group and the common-law group instead of treating them as a single sample, we find by and large similar relationships between real-life friends and happiness. Table 6 reports the estimates. In all cases, the point estimates of the real-life friends’ effects in the married sample or in the common-law sample are smaller than those in the rest of the population (in Table 5 ). This explains why we combine the married and the common-law population together as a single group, and compare it to the rest of the population.

We also split the sample by gender (male and female) and by age group (16–34, 35–49, 50–64 and 65 and up). Table 7 presents the estimates. The estimated effects of on-line networks are mostly insignificant, or have signs indicating negative contributions to SWB. Real-life friends, on the other hand, have positive and mostly significant estimates. The biggest exception concerns the age group 35 to 49, for which none of the network variables (online or real) have any positive and significant effects. In fact, the highest size of on-line network is negatively associated with life ladder, with strong statistical significance.

Finally, we split the sample along the interactive gender×age groups: young (16–34) males and females, middle-aged (34–50) males and females, elder (50 and up) males and females. Table 8 presents the estimates. Many of the estimated effects of the real-life network become insignificant, likely due to the drop in sample size. But they retain their positive sign with very few exceptions. It is worth noting that, among middle-aged females, having the largest size of online network (300 online friends or more) has a large, negative and significant association with SWB. The estimated effect is so large that it exceeds that of being unemployed by a substantial margin. One possible explanation for this association is reverse causality, with unhappy people extending greater efforts to expand their on-line networks or resorting to more intensive online activity that leads to greater network sizes.

Findings from the ESS

The previous section makes three empirical observations: 1) the size of real-life social networks contributes positively to SWB; 2) the size of on-line social networks does not contribute to SWB; 3) the real-life social network is more valuable for respondents who are not married or in a common-law relationship. We can test the robustness of the first and the third observations using the European Social Survey (ESS), a large international survey whose first four rounds (2002–2008) include more than 180,000 individual respondents in 34 countries. The ESS does not, unfortunately, have information about on-line social networks.

We will use the ESS data to estimate equations similar to equ(1), but without the variable for on-line networks. There are two alternative measures of SWB from the survey, happiness and life satisfaction, both on the same 11-point scale from 0 to 10 as is used for the Cantril ladder in the Canadian survey. The variable of interest on the right-hand side is the response to the question “how often do you meet socially with friends, relatives or work colleagues?” This measure of social interactions is originally recorded in seven categories: “Never”, “Less than once a month”, “Once a month”, “Several times a month”, “Once a week”, “Several times a week” and “Every day”. To construct categorical indicators with sufficient sample sizes, we collapse the survey responses into five categories: “less than once a month including never” (with a combined mass of 11%), “once a month” (9%), “several times a month including once a week” (36%), “several times a week” (27%) and “every day” (17%). We then include the categorical indicators on the right-hand side of our estimations to explain SWB.

Our regressions also include a conventional set of control variables in SWB analysis: age, age squared, educational attainment, marital status, labour force status and income. We also control for country fixed effects and wave fixed effects (The wave 1 ESS was conducted in 2002, wave 2 in 2004, wave 3 in 2006 and wave 4 in 2008). The country fixed effects remove cross-country differences in per capita income as well as the potentially different interpretations regarding the scale of satisfaction and happiness. We also use the general level of trust (the response to the question whether “most people can be trusted, or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people”), the frequency of attending religious services outside special occasions, and self-reported health status to control for the differences in social and religious attitudes, subjective health, as well as possible personality differences. We use Ordinary Least Squares, clustering errors at the country level.

Tables 9 and ​ and10 10 present the results. The findings for the control variables are similar to those reported in the previous section. Males tend to report lower happiness and satisfaction. There is a U-shape relation between age and SWB; those in the 40 s report the lowest happiness and life satisfaction. Compared to the divorced, separated or the widowed, being married or in a civil partnership is associated with higher SWB. The same is true for being never married, but to a lesser extent. Higher income is associated with higher SWB. We find positive income-SWB relation throughout the income distribution. The relation flattens out at middle and higher income, but the marginal contribution of income to well-being never falls to zero or becomes negative. In terms of labour force status, there is no significant difference between being employed and not participating. Being unemployed, however, is a significant negative factor with a large estimated effect. The SWB difference between unemployment and non-participation is similar to the difference arising from moving an individual from the lowest income decile to the 7th decile in the case of happiness, or to the 8th decile in the case of life satisfaction. General trust, the frequency of attending religious services and self-reported health status are all positive contributing factors to happiness and to life satisfaction.

Our variable of special interest on the right-hand side is the frequency of socially meeting with friends, relatives and colleagues. The estimated coefficients on this variable are all positive. A higher frequency is associated with greater happiness and satisfaction. For happiness, the greatest improvement occurs when moving away from the bottom (less than once a month) to the category of “once a month”; the happiness increment is 0.4 point. There is a further gain of 0.25 when moving to “several times a month”, then a further 0.16 gain to “several time a week”, then a further 0.17 gain to “every day”. For life satisfaction, the marginal improvements associated with the same step-by-step moves are 0.31, 0.26, 0.17 and 0.09, respectively in the same order. These contributions, especially those arising from a move from the bottom (less than once a month) to the next level (once a month), are very substantial, more than the SWB gain due to a jump from the 5th income decile to the top decile in the case of happiness, and equivalent to a jump from the 5th decile to the 8th decile in the case of life satisfaction. But it is important to realize that there is only about 10% of the population whose frequency of social interactions is at the bottom with less than once a month; so we are talking about moving away from a small minority that has a very low frequency of social interactions. If we focus on the move from “several times a month” to “several times a week”, the marginal contribution is more moderate. The income equivalent is a move from the 5th decile to the 8th in the case of happiness, and from the 5th to the 7th in the case of life satisfaction.

We now examine the difference between married couples/civil partners and those who are not in such relations. The findings from the Canadian survey indicate that the importance of real-life networks to SWB is greater for those who are not in a marriage or a common-law partnership. The ESS yields qualitatively similar observations. The second and the third columns of Tables 9 present estimates from the spilt-sample estimation, with happiness as the dependent variable. Table 10 has the same split-sample estimations with life satisfaction as the dependent variable. For both SWB measures, the estimated effects of social interactions are lower for married/partnered couples than for the rest of the population. In most cases, the differences between point estimates are greater than two standard errors of individual estimates.

The findings from the ESS thus confirm that real-life social networks (captured as the frequency of social interactions in the ESS) are positive and substantial contributing factors to SWB, with an importance that is greater for people who are not married or in a civil partnership.

We have used data from a large new Canadian survey to estimate the subjective well-being benefits of comparably measured networks of real-life and on-line friends. We have three main results. First, we confirm many earlier studies showing the importance of real-life friends to subjective well-being. Second, we find that comparably measured networks of on-line friends have zero or negative correlations with subjective well-being, whether or not allowance is made for the influence of other factors. Third, we find significant interactions between marriage and friends as sources of happiness. The estimated well-being impact of the number of friends is much smaller for those who are married or living together, suggesting that friends and spouses provide some similar happiness benefits. We also find that single people who are dating have subjective well-being significantly higher than those who are not. The effect is almost as high as for living together, which in turn is nearly as high as being married. These results also suggest that the company and friendship of marriage matter as much as the legal institution. Our Canadian results on the well-being value of networks of real-life friends are confirmed also for large samples of data from the European Social Survey. We also confirm from the ESS the greater value of friends for those who are not married.

Our results on the relative values of real-life and on-line friends are likely to be specific to generations, countries, and demographic groups, and to change as social and technological changes alter the possibilities for these two types of social connection to be either mutually supportive or inconsistent in their consequences for well-being. The overall importance of friendship to the maintenance of subjective well-being would seem to support more widespread collection of comparable data on the size and quality of friendships of different types, whether real-life or on-line, or on or off the job.

The limitations of our current results relate in part to the fact that we have only one survey comparably measuring the size of networks of real-life and on-line friends, so that our results might depend to some extent on sample or population specifics. As in all correlation analysis, there are risks that the influences we treat as running from friends to happiness may also be running in the reverse direction, or be determined by some third factors not controlled for. Our hope is that these difficulties are sufficiently shared by the data for the two types of friends that our comparative results might be expected to hold in more experimental contexts. We hope at least to have provided a useful first look.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research for research support, and to Leger Marketing and Coca-Cola Canada for data from their 2011 Happiness Monitor. The Cumulative Data Rounds 1–4 of the European Social Surveys was available at www.europeansocialsurvey.org/ . The Happiness Monitor survey data needed for replicating the results reported in this paper will be made available to other researchers by the authors upon request.

Funding Statement

This research is supported by the Social Interactions, Identity and Well-Being program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. The corresponding author is co-director of that program. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

127 Friendship Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

When you have a good friendship topic, essay writing becomes as easy as it gets. We have some for you!

📝 Friendship Essay Structure

🏆 best friendship topic ideas & essay examples, 💡 good essay topics on friendship, 🎓 simple & easy friendship essay titles, 📌 most interesting friendship topics to write about, ❓ research questions about friendship.

Describing a friend, talking about your relationship and life experiences can be quite fun! So, take a look at our topics on friendship in the list below. Our experts have gathered numerous ideas that can be extremely helpful for you. And don’t forget to check our friendship essay examples via the links.

Writing a friendship essay is an excellent way to reflect on your relationships with other people, show your appreciation for your friends, and explore what friendship means to you. What you include in your paper is entirely up to you, but this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t structure it properly. Here is our advice on structuring an essay on friendship:

• Begin by selecting the right topic. It should be focused and creative so that you can earn a high mark. Think about what friendship means to you and write down your thoughts. Reflect on your relationship with your best friend and see if you can write an essay that incorporates these themes. If these steps didn’t help – don’t worry! Fortunately, there are many web resources that can help you choose. Browse samples of friendship essays online to see if there are any topics that interest you.
• Create a title that reflects your focus. Paper titles are important because they grasp the reader’s attention and make them want to read further. However, many people find it challenging to name their work, so you can search for friendship essay titles online if you need to.
• Once you get the first two steps right, you can start developing the structure of your essay. An outline is a great tool because it presents your ideas in a clear and concise manner and ensures that there are no gaps or irrelevant points. The most basic essay outline has three components: introduction, body, and conclusion. Type these out and move to the next step. Compose an introduction. Your introduction should include a hook, some background information, and a thesis. A friendship essay hook is the first sentence in the introduction, where you draw the reader’s attention. For instance, if you are creating an essay on value of friendship, include a brief description of a situation where your friends helped you or something else that comes to mind. A hook should make the reader want to read the rest of the essay. After the hook, include some background information on your chosen theme and write down a thesis. A thesis statement is the final sentence of the first paragraph that consists of your main argument.
• Write well-structured body paragraphs. Each body paragraph should start with one key point, which is then developed through examples, references to resources, or other content. Make sure that each of the key points relates to your thesis. It might be useful to write out all of your key points first before you write the main body of the paper. This will help you to see if any of them are irrelevant or need to be swapped to establish a logical sequence. If you are composing an essay on the importance of friendship, each point should show how a good friend can make life better and more enjoyable. End each paragraph with a concluding sentence that links it to the next part of the paper.
• Finally, compose a conclusion. A friendship essay conclusion should tie together all your points and show how they support your thesis. For this purpose, you should restate your thesis statement at the beginning of the final paragraph. This will offer your reader a nice, well-balanced closure, leaving a good impression of your work.

We hope that this post has assisted you in understanding the basic structure of a friendship paper. Don’t forget to browse our website for sample papers, essay titles, and other resources!

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• Interpretation of Friendship among Confucian and Neo-Confucian writers In his article “The Fifth Relationship; Dangerous Friendships in the Confucian Context”, Norman Kutcher explores the friendship as outlined under the Confucian system. The above writers have different interpretations of friendship of the under the […]
• Why International Students Find It Hard to Make Friends On the other hand, in societies that promote a high power distance, less powerful individuals accept their position in the chain of command and acknowledge the strengths of their superiors in the hierarchy.
• Gender Stereotyping and Friendship: Women Relationships The most interesting about this article is its ending which states that” the core of a friendship has to have more in-person interactions and experience”.
• The Impact of Friendship in the Epic of Gilgamesh The elusive coalition between Enkidu and Gilgamesh, their fateful destinies and eventual epiphanies broaden the societal apprehension of the elements/value of friendship as expounded in the next discussion.
• Woman Intimacy and Friendship with the Appearance of Social Media The anonymity provided by the social media makes this medium very appealing to both women and men as they are able to “reconstruct” themselves to a level they deem “cool” enough to garner more desired […]
• Childhood Friendship and Psychology Based on their research, they have founded a theory, according to which it is assumed that the children consider close relationship, appraisals, and sharing common interests as something very important to them and on the […]
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• Article Study on the Friendship Concept In the critical review article, the views of Norman Kutcher on the formation of friendships are discussed in detail. In this article, the views of other scholars are discussed in order to strengthen the works […]
• Henry Thoreau: The Concept of the Friendship Not every person is able to understand the essence of nature, its uniqueness, and importance. To my mind, his close connection to nature and a kind of isolation from people helped him to understand deeper […]
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• Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism
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• An Analysis of Friendship and Loyalty in the Film The Deer Hunter
• Turning Away from True Friendship
• Different Types of Friendship and The Need for Friends
• An Analysis of the Dangers of Friendship
• The Victorian Female Friendship and Homosexual References in Emily Dickinson’s Work
• What Is Friendship And How Is God Man ‘s Best Friend?
• The Venerable Kassapa Thera: A Living Symbol of Dedication, Courage, Altruism and Intimate Friendship
• “The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds” by Michael Lewis
• Building from Happiness to Friendship
• What Do You Think Steinbeck Says About the Theme of Friendship in of Mice and Men
• Distributive Justice and the Problem of Friendship
• How Does Shakespeare Demonstrate That Love and Friendship Can Overcome Greed in the Merchant of Venice?
• Does Borrowing Money From Friends Harm Friendship?
• Can Friendship Be Defined by Any Scientific Criteria?
• How Can Enduring Happiness Arise From Friendship?
• Does Campus Diversity Promote Friendship Diversity?
• Is There Any Objection to the Teacher Establishing a Friendship Relationship With the Students?
• How Do Children Cope With Friendship and Death After Reading Charlottes Web?
• Does Ragging Develop Friendship?
• How Does Shakespeare Create Friendship?
• Should Becoming Friends With Benefits Ruin Your Friendship?
• How Does the Nature of Children’s Friendship Change With Age?
• Do Friendships Vary Across Countries?
• What Are Friends for and How Can a Friendship Be Tested?
• How Does the Theme of Loneliness Affect the Friendship and Relationships in “Of Mice and Men”?
• What Are the Elements That Build a Strong Friendship?
• How Does Friendship Help Students Succeed in the University?
• What Does Friendship Mean?
• How Does Friendship Help With Your Mental Health?
• What Does True Friendship Require?
• How Do Friendship Network Characteristics Influence Subjective Well-Being?
• What Was Aristotle’s Thought on Friendship?
• How Do Friendship Networks Work in Online P2P Lending Markets?
• Why Is Friendship Important?
• How Has Friendship Changed Because of the Spread of Social Networking?
• Why Does Friendship End?
• How Do Society and Culture Affect Friendship?
• Can Everything Be Bought for Money?
• How Do Gamers Take the Gaming Experience, Elements Such as Friendships Outside the Game Context?
• Do Friends Generally Have Similar Educational Interests?
• What Individual and Country-Level Factors Might Interact With Friendship Importance to Predict Health and Well-Being?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Essay on Friendship for Students and Children

500+ words essay on friendship.

Friendship is one of the greatest bonds anyone can ever wish for. Lucky are those who have friends they can trust. Friendship is a devoted relationship between two individuals. They both feel immense care and love for each other. Usually, a friendship is shared by two people who have similar interests and feelings.

You meet many along the way of life but only some stay with you forever. Those are your real friends who stay by your side through thick and thin. Friendship is the most beautiful gift you can present to anyone. It is one which stays with a person forever.

True Friendship

A person is acquainted with many persons in their life. However, the closest ones become our friends. You may have a large friend circle in school or college , but you know you can only count on one or two people with whom you share true friendship.

There are essentially two types of friends, one is good friends the other are true friends or best friends. They’re the ones with whom we have a special bond of love and affection. In other words, having a true friend makes our lives easier and full of happiness.

Most importantly, true friendship stands for a relationship free of any judgments. In a true friendship, a person can be themselves completely without the fear of being judged. It makes you feel loved and accepted. This kind of freedom is what every human strives to have in their lives.

In short, true friendship is what gives us reason to stay strong in life. Having a loving family and all is okay but you also need true friendship to be completely happy. Some people don’t even have families but they have friends who’re like their family only. Thus, we see having true friends means a lot to everyone.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Importance of Friendship

Friendship is important in life because it teaches us a great deal about life. We learn so many lessons from friendship which we won’t find anywhere else. You learn to love someone other than your family. You know how to be yourself in front of friends.

Friendship never leaves us in bad times. You learn how to understand people and trust others. Your real friends will always motivate you and cheer for you. They will take you on the right path and save you from any evil.

Similarly, friendship also teaches you a lot about loyalty. It helps us to become loyal and get loyalty in return. There is no greater feeling in the world than having a friend who is loyal to you.

Moreover, friendship makes us stronger. It tests us and helps us grow. For instance, we see how we fight with our friends yet come back together after setting aside our differences. This is what makes us strong and teaches us patience.

Therefore, there is no doubt that best friends help us in our difficulties and bad times of life. They always try to save us in our dangers as well as offer timely advice. True friends are like the best assets of our life because they share our sorrow, sooth our pain and make us feel happy.

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Thomas L. Friedman

Iran Just Made a Big Mistake. Israel Shouldn’t Follow.

By Thomas L. Friedman

Opinion Columnist

It would be easy to be dazzled by the way Israeli, American and other allied militaries shot down virtually every Iranian drone, cruise missile and ballistic missile launched at Israel on Saturday and conclude that Iran had made its point — retaliating for Israel’s allegedly killing a top Iranian commander operating against Israel from Syria — and now we can call it a day.

That would be a dangerous misreading of what just happened and a huge geopolitical mistake by the West and the world at large.

There now needs to be a massive, sustained, global initiative to isolate Iran — not only to deter it from trying such an adventure again but also to give reason to Israel not to automatically retaliate militarily. That would be a grievous error, too. Iran has a regional network, and Israel needs a regional alliance, along with the U.S., to deter it over the long run.

So there must be major diplomatic and economic consequences for Iran, with countries like China finally stepping up: When Tehran fired all those drones and missiles, it could not know that virtually all of them would be intercepted. Some were shot down over Jerusalem. A missile could have hit al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest shrines. (You can see pictures online of Iranian rockets being intercepted in the skies right over the mosque.) Another could have hit the Israeli Parliament or a high-rise apartment house, causing massive casualties.

In other words, we are talking about an escalation without precedent in the long-running, tightly contained, shadow war between Iran and Israel that had almost exclusively been limited to targeted Israeli strikes against Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps units in Lebanon and Syria — where they have no business being in the first place — and Iran retaliating by having its Lebanese proxy militia, Hezbollah, fire rockets at Israel. We’ve also seen Iran smuggling arms and explosives from Syria into Jordan, Gaza and the West Bank to be used to kill Israelis and destabilize Jordan — and the Mossad assassinating a nuclear scientist inside Iran.

But Israel has never launched such a massive missile strike directly at Iran, and Iran had never done so to Israel, either, before this. Indeed, no country had attacked Israel directly since Saddam Hussein’s Iraq did with Scud missiles 33 years ago. Without a U.S.-led global initiative to impose sanctions on Iran and further isolate it on the world stage, Iran’s behavior would be tacitly normalized, in which case Israel will most likely retaliate in kind and we’re on our way to a major Middle East war and $250-a-barrel oil.

“The alternative to a wider full-scale regional war, which we don’t want and Israel doesn’t want, cannot be a return to the status quo ante,” Nader Mousavizadeh, the founder and C.E.O. of the geopolitical consulting firm Macro Advisory Partners and a senior adviser to Kofi Annan when he was the U.N. secretary general, told me. A global effort to isolate Iran, Mousavizadeh added, “is the best way to separate the regime from its people, reassure Israel and Israelis of their security and remove the need for further regional military escalation, which would be a gift to Iran and its proxies.”

It is also the best way to ensure that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel does not drag the United States into a regional war to shore up his own crumbling political base.

It is impossible to exaggerate the political-military implications of what just happened. Shortly after the missile strike, President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran issued a statement declaring that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had “ taught a lesson to the Zionist enemy .” It sure did, but it may not be the one Raisi thinks.

Iran just unwittingly revealed to the whole world that Iran’s government is so penetrated by Western espionage agencies (because so many Iranians hate their own government) that President Biden was able to predict almost the exact hour of attack over a day in advance, and it showed the whole world that Israel and its Western allies have far superior antimissile capabilities than Iran has missile capabilities.

As the Haaretz veteran military correspondent Amos Harel wrote Sunday: We are talking about “an unprecedented achievement in the history of Israel’s wars — albeit with some help from friends — that largely takes away the main card held by Iran and the axis: drones and missiles. The impressive Arrow system interceptions have garnered most of the attention, but Israeli and American pilots downed hundreds of cruise missiles and drones.”

One has to assume that Iran and its proxies have to be both disappointed and unnerved by this turn of events. As Harel added: “The Iranian intention, as evaluated ahead of the attack, was to put on a display of its capabilities with an attack on military targets. An analysis of the areas in which warnings were sounded suggests the target could have been the Nevatim air base in southern Israel. It appears that the Iranians planned to destroy the base and the advanced F-35 fighter jets stationed there, which are the crown jewel of American aid to Israel. Iran failed completely.”

Instead, the Iranian attack may have been limited to badly wounding a 7-year-old Israeli Muslim Bedouin girl hit by falling shrapnel. And if that’s how effective Iran’s offense was, its leaders have to now be wondering how good its defenses are — if Israel now chooses to retaliate. Hezbollah has to be asking the same.

That may explain why Raisi, after his boast about teaching Israel a lesson, asked (pleaded?) that the U.S. and all other “supporters of the occupying regime … appreciate this responsible and proportionate action by the Islamic Republic of Iran” and not go on the offensive against Iran. Message to the world from Tehran: We were just sending a little warning shot, nothing to worry about here, let’s move on.

That is not only because Raisi is worried about his external front. Early this month, Haaretz reported that “Iranian soccer fans in Tehran’s Aryamehr Stadium were asked to observe a minute of silence in honor of the seven members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, including top general Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who were killed in [the Israeli] airstrike on its consulate in Damascus. Instead, spectators began booing and blowing air horns in an apparent act of protest. In a video circulating on social media, fans can be seen loudly interrupting the moment of silence. … In one video that made the rounds on X, fans can be seen shouting, ‘Take that Palestinian flag and shove it up your ass!’” And this is not the first time it’s happened at football matches.

Many Iranians understand that the regime’s obsession with destroying the Jewish state is nothing but a costly way to divert the Iranian public’s attention from its murderous crackdown at home against its own people. As this soccer match story indicates, people are growing less afraid to say so in public — especially after the regime has killed an estimated 750 women, girls and men since a nationwide protest uprising started on Sept. 16, 2022, after the death of a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini , in the custody of Iran’s morality police. Thousands more have been arrested.

One reason Iran supports the Hamas war and prefers that Israel remain stuck in Gaza and occupying the West Bank is that it keeps the world and many Americans focused on Israeli actions — rather than on the brutal crackdown against democracy protesters in Iran and on Iran’s imperialist influence in the region, where it uses proxies to control the politics of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen and uses those countries as military bases to attack Israel.

No one should think Iran is just a paper tiger. Tehran can still unleash thousands of shorter-range rockets against Israel through Hezbollah — and because some of these rockets have precision guidance, they could do significant damage to Israel’s infrastructure. Iran has bigger missiles in its arsenal, as well.

Still, what happened Saturday is ultimately a significant boost for what I call the Inclusion Network in the Middle East (more open, connected countries like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Israel and the NATO allies) and a real setback for the Resistance Network (the closed and autocratic systems represented by Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran’s Shiite militias in Iraq) and Russia. The sound within Iran and the Resistance Network on Sunday morning is that sound you hear from your car’s GPS after a wrong turn: “Recalculating, recalculating, recalculating.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Thomas L. Friedman is the foreign affairs Opinion columnist. He joined the paper in 1981 and has won three Pulitzer Prizes. He is the author of seven books, including “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” which won the National Book Award. @ tomfriedman • Facebook