Online friendships are real, and they have one specific weakness

This works through friendships formed online in the order the parts actually depend on each other.

What they supply well

A community organised around a specific interest supplies exactly what adult friendship struggles for, which is repeated contact with the same people about something you both care about. Frequency is high and cheap, since a message costs nothing and there is no travel, scheduling or venue involved. Disclosure often happens faster than offline, because the setting is somewhat separate from the rest of a person's life.

Communities also gather people by interest rather than by geography, which is why they work so well for anybody with an unusual preoccupation or situation. For people who are isolated by illness, caring, geography or minority status, these friendships are frequently the most substantial ones they have.

The distinctive weakness

What is missing is presence: nobody can sit with you, drive you somewhere, notice that you look unwell or turn up at a hospital. There is also very little incidental knowledge, since you see what somebody chooses to describe rather than how they actually live.

This means a person can conceal a great deal, not usually through deception but simply through the absence of any other channel. It also means a friendship can be intense for years and still be missing the ordinary texture that offline friendships accumulate without effort. The gap becomes visible in a crisis, which is when physical help is what is required.

The single point of failure

Most online friendships exist entirely on one platform, which means the platform is a single point of failure for the relationship. Forums close, communities move, accounts are banned and services shut down, and friendships of many years can end within a day.

At the kitchen table, this happens regularly and is one of the most under-discussed risks of a life with a substantial online social component. Exchanging contact details that do not depend on the platform is the entire fix and takes about a minute. It is worth doing early, since the moment a community is closing is the moment everybody is scattered.

Meeting in person

Many online friendships convert well to offline ones, and the meeting is usually less awkward than people fear because the friendship already exists. The first meeting is often surprisingly ordinary, since the substance has been established and only the physical setting is new.

Across a decade, some do not convert, and discovering that somebody is different in person is a real and unremarkable outcome. Ordinary safety precautions apply when meeting somebody in person for the first time: a public place, somebody told where you are, your own transport.

Community meetups do a great deal of this work at once and are the reason some online groups last for decades.

Where the risks sit

Online spaces make it easy to misrepresent a situation, and the strongest signal of a problem is somebody who avoids voice or video contact over a long period. Requests for money are the clearest warning sign, particularly when accompanied by urgency and a reason not to tell anybody else.

This does not mean online friendships are suspect; the great majority are exactly what they appear to be. It does mean applying the same caution you would to any relationship in which you have limited independent information. If something feels wrong, describing the situation to somebody offline is the fastest way to get a clear view of it.

Balancing the two

Online friendships are not lesser and they are not a complete substitute, and treating them as either causes problems. The specific risk for isolated people is that a satisfying online life removes the discomfort that would otherwise drive local contact. A workable arrangement is a strong online circle plus at least one or two local structures, however modest.

At the kitchen table, it is also worth having somebody geographically near who could turn up, which is a practical rather than an emotional consideration. For most people the honest position is that these friendships are real, valuable and incomplete in one specific respect.

The takeaway

Get their details off the platform, because the friendship is real and the forum it lives on is not permanent.

Nobody keeps everyone. Choose the few and be serious about them.