Just following middle school, the three most awkward years of existence, in high school you are lucky if your friends still want to hangout with you knowing all of the embarrassing things that you went through. We all probably have once wished that we could go back in time and undo some social experience that we made incredibly awkward. A true blessing of having online friends is that they aren’t there to see us in our unfortunate moments. Online friends are overall great for so many things.

We all at one point or another need advice and having someone to give an unbiased opinion is just one reason that online friends are perfect. They aren’t with you everyday and they most likely don’t know the person who you are having conflict with. “They are friends that come without any worries of the typical high school drama,” said junior Nick Ghosh.

Despite everything, online friends are just online friends and we can’t typically have the experience of hanging out with them in person. Because of that, the relationship may not be as valued as personal relationships. If you are someone who is always texting, you can agree that it is hard to grasp what the person is feeling over the phone. You can’t see their face, and unless they use emojis with every text they send, you could easily get the wrong message.

The meaning of friends varies from person to person, and depending on what someone believes, online friends may not be as wanted. Because you can’t hangout with your online friend in person much if at all, the relationship may not be as intimate as wanted and that can prevent the relationship from growing. Ultimately it is pretty easy to lose touch, since your phone is all that holds the relationship together. “I’ve had a lot of online friends since middle school, some I’ve been close with for years, and others that I have no idea what happened to,” said senior Alyson Gregory.

The beauty of online friends lies within the fact that you are able to have contact with people all around the world. “I think online friends are beneficial because it allows us to meet people from different communities,” said junior Haley Williams. Learning about people who are different from you and getting to know someone who you wouldn’t necessarily hangout with in real life can open up your mind to new ways of thinking. Especially in high school, we generally stay within the same cliques throughout the four years and it never hurts to change it up a bit.