I remember checking out YouTube for the first time. It was around sixth grade, I think. It was because my best friend at the time, Sabah, told me to watch funny cat videos on it. So I did and I was confused. I thought to myself, "How is this entertaining? Is this what people do in their free time?" Then I saw how people were able to interact with each other over videos and that freaked me out! My mom always told me "Never talk to strangers" but apparently the people on that cat video didn't mind talking to different strangers all the time. I told myself that I was never going to talk to people I didn't know in real life. Flash forward to 2016 and I'm close to people who live as far as Finland! Of course, I am always careful with who interact with. There are lots of people out there on the Internet that want to make some friends too and have a good purpose. I'm happy I was able to find those types of people. It's best to try to be slow with meeting new people online and see who they are as a person on their other social media like Instagram. Of course, this is not always a sound method to follow, but it's a step in a better direction than just "meeting" someone and telling them everything about yourself. You never know, you might find a really special friend on the other side of the world.
What do you think? How was your first experience with interacting with someone online? Were you scared? Have you made close friendships with people online? How did you develop your friendships?
I used to be friends with someone online who lived in New York. I never felt comfortable sharing information so I didn't really reveal much about myself. I've heard of way too many situations where people pretend to be someone on the internet. I understand that there are a lot of people online who just want to make friends and connect with people of common interests. But at the same time, it's hard for me to trust someone who could be lying. I would just advise you to be cautious about who you're talking to and make sure they're legit. (:
ReplyDeleteI remember when I use to play this online game and when YouTube used to be different a while back around 2010. While I was using YouTube as a form of social media at the time I had met a friend who lived in Vancouver. We often would talk about random topics and our terrible music phases. Though I did hide my identity and tried not to share too much information about myself. I do find it interesting how sometimes you can easily just click with someone especially online. Eventually my friend stopped using YouTube as a form of social media. I was a little bit saddened that I probably would never actually be able to meet or talk to her again, but it was great while it lasted.
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