When you were growing up, I am sure you have heard your parents tell you, “Do not talk to strangers on the Internet.” Parents claim to always be right. And yes, although our parents are usually right, there are some loop holes to the advice they share with us. Under certain circumstances, who you are online may not be who you are in real life. This does not mean you have to “catfish” anyone on the social networking sites you use to communicate with people. In fact, acting as the person you really think you are can shape how you are interpreted by strangers on the web.

Four years ago, I made a Twitter account to keep up with my friends from school and my hometown. Facebook popularity among my friends and peers started to decrease a lot. We moved on to Twitter and Instagram. Twitter is a faster-paced network, where you can live tweet what you are doing, how you are feeling, or even tweet your favorite artist. I took advantage of the ability to stay connected to the celebrities whose lives I actually cared about. I always knew where they were, what they were doing, and when they would be in New York for a concert or appearance.

In 2011, Twitter became my prime social outlet. I was the quiet girl in my grade, who had a decent group of friends, but I was never really involved in clubs or extracurricular activities in high school. Socializing and partying was not really my thing, so I spent a lot of time on my laptop and phone. Throughout most of my days, you could find me with headphones in my ears, keeping to myself while listening to Justin Bieber or Cody Simpson. I used to stare at my phone, isolate myself from the world, and scroll through my Twitter feed for hours, waiting for updates about the world around me. When I started to really discover how Twitter worked, I found myself mostly tweeting about concerts and music. Next thing I knew, I had started to gain followers. My followers just kept increasing, so I would follow people back with the same interests as me. My social feed was filled with text posts, images, and videos of Bieber, Simpson, and other artists onstage. Interactions started filling my notifications with strangers who seemed like they were interested in what I had to say whenever I fired out a tweet. It was weird and took some getting used to. Having people talk to me online made me appreciate the attention I was getting.

Eventually, these girls who started tweeting me started introducing themselves. We learned more and more about each other after talking increased. After weeks of daily interactions over tweets, we had exchanged phone numbers and talked 24/7. Little did I know, all these Cody Simpson fans that I shared a common interest with are from all over Long Island! Through this finding, I had gotten the idea in my head that I could actually meet these people! Why should I continue talking to these fans through a screen when we can hang out in person? Months passed by and we girls would meet up at concerts. To this day, we buy tickets together for shows so we can sit together. Other than going to shows, we do group outings, traveling in any direction on Long Island to find each other. These girls became my best friends. I had started to socialize with them more than I hung out with my friends from home. There was some sort of significant difference between my friendships with these people online than I had with my friends from school. They understood me more. I was able to be myself with them around and not feel like I had to fit into the social norm at school, where I never quite felt like I completely fit in.

Being able to be truly happy with these new people around me made me feel really good about myself. My Internet friends have become the people I turn to for all of my problems. They are there for me to vent to about issues that no one else understands. Texting and FaceTiming every day became a routine. We would have countdowns until the next time we saw each other, whether it would be us looking forward to one of our sweet 16s, which we all were invited to, or even just another concert of our liking. These friends I had made really started to understand my love for music, and shared the same devotion I had to a fan base. As time went on, I had found new artists I had fallen in love with. Discovering and falling in love with more boy bands had led me to meet more and more fans online. In fact, the people I started talking to more recently have ranged far and wide across the U.S. I now have friends in upstate New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Texas, and all the way to California and Canada. With current technology, I have been able to increase my ways of meeting these people in real life as well. One of my good friends Vanessa, who lives in Ontario, Canada, constantly flies down to New York to visit our group of Internet friends who all reside on Long Island. It’s pretty insane that distance does not keep us apart, even though we live hundreds of miles away from each other. Nothing can weaken the strength of the friendship we have!

Years passed, and now it is 2015. I am a freshman in college now. My fangirling days are pretty much over, but my love for music and bands is stronger than ever. The fan girl days had started when I was finishing up middle school. I find it truly amazing how over half of my current friends today are still made up of those girls I have found common interests with online. Attending concerts monthly has become a huge part of my life. Knowing that I get to experience these shows I go to with these people I met online is pretty crazy to think about. I am more and more thankful for these girls every day. I can honestly say they are my best friends. Being away at college has made me miss them all like crazy. I still keep in touch with these girls and talk to them every day, but not being able to be with them physically can be rough. We have gone from seeing each other from once a week, to now once every few months. One thing that keeps the bond so strong is knowing that we will all be able to see each other very soon, and the wait will be worth it!

At the end of the day, you need to be careful who you talk to online. Always take precaution and do not just give out personal information to anybody. Also, make sure you go with your gut feeling when you are about to post a status, tweet, or post a picture on Instagram! Ask yourself if a post has the ability to offend anyone. If it does, don’t post it. On the bright and more positive side, social networking is a great way to stay connected and a great way to meet people. I took a risk when it came to putting myself out there on the Internet. Not a day goes by where I do not forget how incredibly blessed I am to have met my best friends online.