How would you feel if moving to a new town meant losing track of your friends? What if the only way of getting news from faraway friends was writing letters that took ages to be delivered (递送)? This was how things worked not very long ago. Thanks to advances in technology, how we make friends and communicate with them has changed greatly.
Nowadays, we can move around the world and still stay in touch with our friends. Social media tools (社交媒体工具) let us see what our friends are busy with and maintain friendships.
The digital (数字) age also enables us to find people who share our interests. Whatever our hobbies, the Internet can connect us with others who also enjoy doing them, even if they live on the other side of the world.
But when you friend people online, does this mean that they really are your friends? It depends.
If people always exchange true personal information online, then yes, these friendships can be real and meaningful. But we need to remember that what we see on social media is often not the whole truth about a person. Sometimes smiling photos can hide real problems. On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. A young person could be old; a woman could be a man; we could even be sharing our information with criminals.
But this doesn't mean that we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. Although technology has changed the way we acquire (获得)friends, the meaning of friendship and our longing for friends remain the same. As Aristotle said, no one would choose to live without friends, even if he had all other goods.
