Who has only 1,000 friends ...?

So asked a girl, who together with her sister, racked up more than 16,000 friends worldwide online, as reported in Sunday Times Lifestyle (June 10, 2007).

A paragraph in the same article said older people might "tut-tut" at the notion of such "friendship", but points out that for the younger people, it was not so much about "real" friendship as about belonging to a group.

A comment posted in http://comment.straitstimes.com/showthread.php?t=520 said he'd consider them cyber-pals rather than friends, defining friends as "real people I see face to face", "they are there when I'm in trouble, I can bare my heart out to them and not be afraid or vulnerable. I can trust them to keep a secret, I know they're on my side when I'm doing right, they're not afraid to point out my faults and correct me when I'm wrong."

So is it a matter of the term "friendship" defined more loosely among the younger generations?

I think not quite.  It's more about these younger generations not raised up the same as the older generations.

In Singapore, in general, they have less responsibilities and burdens, more access to IT/TV and money and personal freedom, and less guidance on how to handle them.

Making pals globally is not a bad thing per se.  Especially for Singaporeans are who confined to a little red dot just north of the Equator, it helps develop a global perspective ... to some extent.

One problem with this hope of course is the cyber-pals they befriend are not necessarily the best people to interact with for "developing a global perspective".

Many youngsters are not widely-travelled (limited by their finances, of course), and for folks living in places like the US, their world is equivalent to their own city and state, and sometimes, country.  If you are wiser, you might realise how parochialistic some of these people can be, especially if they are among the ethnic majority of their own community.

One thing noticable about many folks who go to CHF (where I came to know most of my online contacts), especially among those from USA, is that they are either ethnic minorities in their communities/countries (like Gubook, YZB, Mengtzu), or have had extensive interaction with culturally different people (Francois, Kenneth).

Our friends can either help bring us up to "their level", or bring us down to theirs.

In a way, I guess my own character and personality is such that I never felt I had to define myself in such a way to be acceptable to others.  There were times in my growing teenage years when I did feel rather lonely with few friends, but it had never occurred to me to change myself to "fit in".

Eventually, it took a while, but I found friends, who share common interests with me, rather than me having to adopt a new interest.

I still remember how friends were such an important part of my life back during the teenage years.  We didn't have instant communication like today, so contact was mainly through the phone or face-to-face meetings.

For the generation before me, telephone was out of the question as it was too expensive, especially for those living in different countries, so they wrote letters.

When some of my friends went overseas for their university education, I wrote letters too ... until we all got email accounts, at least those of us who were more tech-savvy then.

I kept in touch via letters with my first girlfriend who went overseas for more than 2 years ... and our relationship was ended via letters too.

I just have to remember and understand the physical world has changed, and is constantly changing.

My daughter watched Shrek 2 on TV last night with my in-laws.  While all the adults were laughing at the "in-jokes", Snowylass were clueless about the subtle and not-so-subtle references to the conventional fairy-tales, her exposure to them still limited.

I realise that in her "growing years", a damsel-in-distress would be a very quaint notion.

So how could I be able to be there for her when she grows up and come into contact with these type of things such as online friends, or even worse, pay a toll line to chat with strangers?

Do I insist to her to follow my own experience of making friends?  I think not.

While the physical world change, human nature changes little.  All that we do are to meet some fundamental needs.

I just have to be there for her, so that she'll always know she can talk to me, be able to express herself, her needs - emotional and all.

And hopefully, she'll learn from daddy and mummy what worthwhile friendship really are like.

I have come a long way from making friends with only those I spend considerable time together with in school and church, to sending a gift to someone I've only known on-line.

There are many lessons from my own experiences I hope my daughter can learn from.

And of course, my son too.