A good first step to building social skills can be to start building online friendships OR make friends online. That brings up the question: how do you make friends online?
As good as real friends
Internet friends can be as good as, if not better than a real-life friend. Especially the older generation doesn’t quite get that. They didn’t grow up with the online communities. They don’t know any better? Fortunately, youth do.
Of course, there are limitations. You can’t go running with a friend who is an ocean away.
One of the easiest ways to make new internet friends is to find communities that share your interests. Whether it’s gaming, anime, TV series, roleplay: that doesn’t matter. So long as it interests you, that’s good enough.
So step 1 is to make a list of your interests. What do you like to do/watch/talk about/know a lot about?
Next step is finding where these people hang out. For whatever topic or interest there is a community online nowadays.
Make friends online is not something that happens overnight. It’s not like you instantly sign up for a message board and that you get new friends. That’s would be great, but doesn’t work like that.
Keep communicating with the other person. Send them a message about how they’re doing, what they’re up to and talk about common interests. Keep building the relationship.
Here’s a challenge for you: go and take your first step now. You decide whatever that step is.
