How sincere are online friendships

It is the weekend. You cannot wait to meet your friends. Because of the work and family obligations, you have not been able to see them for a couple of months. You all confirmed your attendance, most probably via text messages, or even better, in the WhatsApp group.
The day has come, you all met, ordered tea and coffee, and started discussing the latest hashtag on Twitter. Few minutes passed, and you cannot help but to feel that itch in your hands, missing the touch of your mobile phone. And while you are sneakingly stretching your hand to grab the phone, you realize that you and your friends have not been talking for a while. You look up to find one of them smiling at his own mobile, and the other is typing like crazy on the phone with a determinate look on his face.
If you and your friends are social media enthusiasts, then you must be familiar with such a scenario.
Apparently, the lines between real friendships and the ones created on the cyberspace are getting blurry.
A lot of people are no longer able to differentiate, to appreciate the human basic need to interact with real human beings.
Psychologists provide many factors that characterize a healthy friendship; respect, empathy, support, valuing and validating.
Some of these factors seem to be available in any online relationship, but you need to look deeper, unless you want to redefine what friendship really means.
“State of Friendship in America Report” shows that 75 percent of Americans are not truly satisfied with the status of their friendships.
Most of the respondents indicated that they would prefer deeper friendships to have more friends.
Although the survey did not mention social media in a direct way as a factor in the low friendship satisfaction rates, it is still possible to conclude that the modern networking technologies are not what they seem to be at the first glance.
Participants of the survey hinted that the qualities they were looking for in true friends are that they should be good people, loyal, and will be there whenever needed; I wonder how much of these qualities could match the friends you have in your social media networks.
The problem deepens when online friendships start to cause anxiety and mistrust. Why he did not like my Facebook status? How come she did not comment on my Instagram photo? And the mother of all evil, he unfollowed me on Twitter!
A study published in the Journal of Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, found that the longer people spent on Facebook, the more they agreed that others are living better, happier, and more exciting lives!
The bottom line here is that no matter what, real friends are irreplaceable. You could have hundreds of friends on Facebook whom you never met, thousands of Twitter followers whom you laugh and share stories with, but when it comes to a situation where you need a sincere advice, a consoling hand, an ear and heart to listen to your fears, dreams, and confessions, you would still need a real friend.