"Don't talk to strangers on the internet."

"Everyone on the internet is a perverted old man."

Sound familiar? Most adults tend to scoff at talking to people on the internet, and while they are correct to have worries, I want to act as a living example of why you should talk to "strangers" on the internet.

I got a tumblr my freshman year of high school after my favorite band at the time (Coldplay) posted a promotional something on their own tumblr. Almost immediately, I began talking to the other Coldplay fans on the site and before I knew it, these people became some of my closest friends. This was when I started to realize how special internet friends can be.

I didn't stay on tumblr much longer, but my sophomore year I became a Twitter addict. This was around the same time that I started to really get into movies, so I followed a lot of accounts with similar interest. Turns out there are a lot of 16-25 year olds on twitter who like movies. It has been four years and I'm still talking to some of the people I started talking to at the beginning, even some of the people from tumblr five years ago. The secret to this that isn't a secret at all: these are all teenage kids living normal lives just like mine, they just happen to not live in my city. You're not going to have a very enriched life if you only talk to the same people you've known from your hometown since you were in kindergarten (not to discredit these hometown heroes, we love them too!). Because of the internet, I'm lucky enough to have friends from New York, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, California, England, Ireland, Australia, Dominican Republic, Germany and even more places. Without the internet, I wouldn't know some of my best friends.

Not only have I made friends, I've made business partners. I've collaborated with several twitter friends on films and I'm currently in the middle of producing a film project that brings about 24 young Twitter filmmakers together. I had a buddy from Twitter compose music for my second short film and I've established regular business as a graphic designer for a girl I met on twitter (who also happens to be one of the greatest friends I have ever had). Though putting yourself out there on the internet can seem scary, if you do it in the right way you can become far more successful than you would've without doing so.

The bottom line is I love my internet friends. I know a lot of my in real life (IRL) friends who also love their internet friends. I've ended up having friends already at my college because I happened to follow a few SCAD students on twitter without knowing it. I technically met my boyfriend over Facebook (this one is a stretch because it was through a SCAD page and we met up at school, but nevertheless). If you use common sense and be safe, you can find fantastic folk out there on the world wide web and I encourage you to do so! You'll thank me, I just know it.