Real versus virtual dosti
Gone are the days when songs like Yeh dosti hum nahin todenge was the signature tune for strong bonds of friendship. Today it is texting, BBMing and Facebooking that define the way friendships are forged. When the real and the virtual world often overlap, one wonders whether true friendship has lost its value in the age of social networking sites. Are teens happy adding people whom they hardly know on to their friends’ list, just to flaunt their popularity or do they pour their hearts out to their online friends?
Youngsters today are a smart lot who combine the best of both worlds. Most of them believe their friendships are strong enough to withstand Facebook and Orkut’s popularity; rather these sites can be a medium to strengthen ties even more and stay connected with long lost friends.
And it seems, that old is gold as far as strong bonds of friendship go. A student of Little Flower Degree College, Mansi Jamani agrees while Facebook helps friends stay in touch with one another anywhere in the world and search out even long lost friends, it’s less about the quantity of buddies and more about the quality of friends. “When it comes to sharing my troubles or secrets, I would only bank on a few select friends whom I have known for a long time, not a Net friend,” avers Mansi, for whom, friendship is a “second family, without which life is incomplete.”
Given the selfish times we live in, where stealing a boyfriend or maligning someone online is an easy option for many, sifting real from fake friends can be a difficult task for some youngsters who may find their true friends the hard way,
Says 18-year-old Ronak Bokadia, “We trust only those friends whom we know from our school or college days on such sites, and not complete strangers. After all, it’s the former who really care for you when you are in trouble. The rest are there just for fun,” he adds.
Pooja Bohra, a 19-year-old college student, points out that she is careful about selecting her online friends. “I know they care, or I wouldn’t have trusted them. After all, they are not complete strangers but people with whom I can hang out sometimes. There are also some friends from whom I have drifted away after school. It’s wonderful that I can now be in touch with most of them through FB,” she says.
As for adding value to such friendships and cementing the bond, nothing like the old fashioned way of hanging out together. Friendship Day for most youngsters, is just one more excuse to have a great time together.
Teenagers are all geared to party with their real friends and watch movies or party on friendship day. “If we have an option, why should we stay hooked to social networking sites on Friendship day instead of partying hard all night with our closest friends,” quips Rashmi Bahirwani, a college student. But, Rashmi concurs with Mansi and Pooja that social networking sites have gone a long way in reuniting friends and are the best means of interacting with pals and find out what’s the latest goings-on in their lives from any part of the world.
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