One of the most fascinating features of our new digital situation is the surge of a new type of relationship: the online friendship.
This phenomenon has been much in the news this past week with the tragic suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier after a new online friend named Josh suddenly cut off their relationship. Megan's parents later learned that Josh never existed. "Josh" was the online creation of a neighborhood family in an effort to gain Megan's confidence and learn what she was saying about their own daughter.
The case dramatically highlights the limitations and even the dangers of online relationships.
And – in a very sad way – the tragedy also illustrates the intense emotional investment that many – and not just teenagers – put into online relationships.
The Meier's situation underlines at least two potential downsides of online community:
1) It is very easy for anyone to misrepresent themselves or to be deceived by someone else's misrepresentations online.
2) Online relationships are highly optional. At any moment and with very little effort, anyone can decide to end an online relationship. Such unilateral actions can be devastating to the other party.
I first became involved in online community in the late 80's when I used my Leading Edge PC (which, when I bought it, had two 5.25 floppy drives and no hard drive) to dial into a Washington DC-area Episcopal church bulletin board called Church Without Walls. Through that group I met a few individuals online which lead to some face-to-face meetings as well. More recently, in 2001 I started the online faithmaps discussion group using Yahoo Groups. That group eventually grew to over 300 subscribers posting sometimes 1000 posts a month.
Some amazing things happened in the 'mapper community – some very real spiritual connections – that convinced me of the legitimacy of online relationships. Some of the most significant events that occurred were in the several online small groups that some of us began within the larger faithmaps community. Our format was very simple. Each person would tell their spiritual story and the others would respond with questions, comments, etc. We laid a ground rule of complete safety: what was said in the room was to stay in the room. Within those groups, some folks shared things that they had never told anyone. Genuine spiritual community occurred. The faithmaps discussion group was not an online church, but church occurred there. And some folks said that they were able to make connections within our online community that they did not feel they could make in their local churches. It demonstrated to me the powerful opportunity the church has for kingdom impact with online initiatives. (I earlier blogged here some guidelines for how I moderated this community.)
Online community will not replace face-to-face interaction. With current technology, in many aspects it cannot compete with the superior interaction available to us with face-to-face community. And – as we've seen – there are challenges to online community. That being said, because people are increasingly living substantial portion of their lives online, the churches that love them must go there as well treading carefully as they go.
Great article. I have absoutely nothing to add, except to say that that its a balance also for churches/orgs that are online not to push that online button so much that people feel there is no possible face-to-face option.
Posted by: Antoine of MMM | November 19, 2007 at 11:42 AM