Meeting That Special Someone

Has the ability to meet someone special gone? Have social networking sites taken over the traditional way to make friends? Millions of people use the internet to join dating sites or sites where you can add your ‘friends’, but are these people taking advantage of the idea of talking to other people behind a screen? Are they using it as a type of protection from criticism and judgement said by someone they supposedly like? In the future, when I have children, I don’t want to have to tell them about a friends request or a poke. What happened to the romantic, fairy tale, stories of meeting on the train or the beach?

Even I am a user of the social networking sites, especially Twitter, but I’d preferably talk to people I see quite often or not so often. There are people that I went to secondary school with that now have hundreds of ‘friends’ on Facebook, but cannot possibly  know them all.

After declining many ‘friends requests’ I miss the one person I do not see much of at all, but is a great childhood friend of mine. Once upon a time she was an ‘addict’ to the good old Facebook; constantly playing games, updating statuses, talking to friends, but now that she is free of this addiction I feel as though I’ve lost a good friend. Yes, we see each other every other month or so and have great catch-up talks outside a cafe or in town, but I still loved the weekly chit-chat sessions we had going on.

So I admit social networking sites are good for one thing. But does growing up as a teenager in a world based on social networking sites mean more unconfident and bad behavioural children and adults? More and more teenagers are meeting people online, without knowing who these people are at all, thinking they are a friend or maybe even more. Will this addiction help children when growing up or actually set them back into problems with communicating?

Meeting people over the internet first makes it a whole lot harder when meeting them in person. Is that what it’ll be? A world where people never meet one another face to face? Is the romantic love at first sight and fairy tale endings disappearing with time itself?

If society today thinks talking behind a screen is a good idea, then how is anyone going to find Mr or Mrs Right?