"I'm Petting the Laptop, Which Has You Inside It": Reflecting on Lived Experiences of Online Friendship

TL;DR

This study explores the lived experiences of online friendships through interviews, highlighting unique challenges, strategies, and implications for design and understanding of online social relationships beyond platform-specific contexts.

Contribution

It provides a platform-agnostic analysis of online friendships, emphasizing time-stable interactions and challenging traditional views of online social ties.

Findings

Online friendships face stigma from real-life circles.

Participants use specific strategies to maintain online relationships.

The study advocates for design considerations that support stable online interactions.

Abstract

Online(-only) friendships have become increasingly common in daily lives post-COVID despite debates around their mental health benefits and equivalence to ''real'' relationships. Previous research has reflected a need to understand how online friends engage beyond individual platforms, and the lack of platform-agnostic inquiry limits our ability to fully understand the dynamics of online friendship. We employed an activity-grounded analysis of 25 interviews on lived experiences of close online friendship spanning multiple years. Our findings present unique challenges and strategies in online friendships, such as stigma from real-life circles, an ambivalent relationship with online communities, and counter-theoretical reappropriations of communication technology. This study contributes to HCI research in online communities and social interface design by refocusing prior impressions of strong vs. weak-ties in online social spaces and foregrounding time-stable interactions in design for relationship maintenance through technology. Our work also promotes critical reflection on biased perspectives towards technology-mediated practices and consideration of online friends as an invisible marginalized community.