Yes, so could you tell me your experience with that?

With?

With how you’ve created friendships through social media and what’s going on there?

So, yeah, all..I’ve made literally all my friends that I have now through social media because of university, because we’ve had like these group chats and etcetera. And so, we have like a Facebook group which led into a WhatsApp group, which led into a snap chat group, which led into loads of other groups.

Is that something that the university provided?

No. No, that was something that the students did.

Who initiated this?

Someone put it… someone, a student, put…made a Facebook group for 2020-2021 students that are going to x university, this university, and then the word got out and one of my…one person that I know who was going to my university, I knew one person that was going to my university, and he told me ‘oh that there’s this Facebook group you should join it and I was like ok, why not? I didn’t think much of it. I actually didn’t think anything of it. I joined it and then I saw a link for WhatsApp group chat and I was like ok, lets join that and then through the WhatsApp there was like all these groups for all the different subjects and on different social media platforms and so I joined them all and before I knew it, I was a part of 10 different groups and then I met lots of different friends and then you just started getting to know each other. And that’s kind of when the loneliness period kind of cut off.

So, tell me about the relationships that are formed through social media in relation to the relationships that you had formed in person. Is there any relationship? Is there any difference? What do you see the pros and cons in those relationships?

I think it’s better to form a relationship online so long as you end up meeting in person. If it stays online forever then I don’t think it’s beneficial and I think that’ll make you feel more lonely. But all of the friends that I made online, I eventually met in person and I do have a couple friends that I’ve met online that I’ve never met in person and like the relationship isn’t as strong. So, I think that its been more beneficial to meet people online.