6 Tips For Making Friends Online Without Being Awkward

How do you know you need friends. Are you staring off into space a lot and reciting all the poetry you learned in English class? Chances are if you're working from home, you could probably use some online friends.

Often we talk to people online not thinking of the potential friendship that awaits, the truth is, all it takes is a little extra effort and you could have a new friend in no time!

Let's go through the in's and out's of finding online friends and how you can maintain your friendships for years to come, even meet in person!

Look on your social media and follow/message people who have similar interests, that way you'll definitely have something to talk about to start off. You can find this out based on their type of posts. If they post pictures of baking and you like baking make sure to like their posts and even comment!

I know most of us go online to escape making small talk, but small talk apparently still applies to online conversation especially with people you don't know too well! So be positive and dive in whenever you're inspired to chat!

You'd be surprised how easy you can meet people on forums. Join a forum that's specific to your interests. Reddit is a good place because of the private messaging feature. You can also join forums on Facebook or Meetup.com.

Leave comments on other people's posts, saying nice things is a great way to get their attention and make them familiar with you. Say what you want to say of course but keep on the positive side because you're trying to solicit their response! You can even consider leaving a follow-up question to keep the convo going.

Also, commenting with a photo is a good way to bring an extra dose of reality. It can be easy to be caught up in the online world and not consider the people you meet online to be real. A photo helps to make the conversation a bit more like real life.

Share your WhatsApp or Discord info so you can continue the convo on a chat app instead. Pretty soon you'll be friends for life!

Meeting friends online is fun but be sure to take precautions. Ultimately, you may not know who's chatting on the other end.

Set your privacy settings to the highest degree and don't share too much personal information, keep the conversation to topical info like what the post is about, the game or your shared interests.

If you do decide to meet in person, always tell someone and give them the details of the time and location.

So as you can see after just a bit of effort you can have yourself a genuine 100% cool as you online friend. Now all you have to do is maintain the friendship, and this is easy since you'll both be online!