Social intelligence and online presence - is your web-life helping make nefriends?

New report from IOPPN at King's College London and National Citizens' Service reported here: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-highlights-loneliness-lack-social-young.html

It says that young people are nervous about making friends from different backgrounds but that on-line presence can help dissolve this barrier. It stresses, though, that on-line presence is not enough.

Are you making friends with people online/in TSR etc that you wouldn't make in real life? If so, why?

I make more friends online than in real life, just because I'm quite quiet in real life and I've always found it difficult to try and initiate friendships. I don't want to feel like I'm pushing into anyone's circle in real life, whereas online I feel more confident about making contact (probably because I know that people can ignore me without much awkwardness if they want to, so I know I'm not pushing myself on them). I'm also quite self-conscious in real life, so the Internet helps because I know that no one can see me and it's my appearance/physical presence that I'm self conscious about rather than what I say. So I guess you could say that being online helps me to make friends with a wider variety of people, and more confident people, than I make in real life but there isn't any difference in how I approach people from different social/racial backgrounds in real life as opposed to on the Internet (I grew up around a wide variety of people from all kinds of backgrounds, so that probably helps).

its really have fun, doing social media, get some friends, however im choosy to get a friend online because i know you know what i mean