Do you think chatting with people on the internet is being social?

For some folks, it’s the only way they get any social life. There was a time in my life when my only friends were online. It was a God-send.

It depends on the degrees… if that’s all you do I think then perhaps you need more of a social life… but of course it can be social

I need people full stop

Clearly it’s not the same evidenced by the fact that many people who are “social” online are not in real life. They most likely view being social online to be easier than doing it in real life. So while it’s still communication and that’s great, it’s not the same thing.

Yes, definitely. But it shouldn’t completely replace getting out in real life.

And… when out with friends, give them the gift of your attention. Keep your cell phones in your pocket as much as possible. Don’t be constantly texting or twittering etc.

Sometimes, in a pasatiempo sort of way.

sure, you are interacting with others.

How would it not be?
You’re having conversations with other people.

There have been people I met 1st online that have been good friends for years now, some of whom I’ve met face to face in different parts of the country, not just local tweetups.

I read a purported “happiness expert”‘s article which contended that online relations yield a “neutral” (zero) net benefit to one’s happiness. While they don’t hurt you, they won’t make you happy to the extent that actual human connections and relationships do.

Just barely. It is a sub-set of being sociable, but not really social, without face to face contact.

Kinda sorta. I know it sure feels great when my out of state friends I no longer see but maybe once a year are all online with me and we can chat or play around in the same place online.

As the majority of the first world is now populated by cyborgs (with mobile phones, laptops, PDAs and various other equipment on and around ourselves each day), I would say that we have two forms of social interaction now. Both are the same, but they are at different stages.

While chatting with people on the internet and conversing involves the fundamentals of being social it lacks many of the factors that make up our communication.
Speech is just one of the many ways we communicate, by typing we lose out on the other factors, such as emotion and the communication that we do with our body language and expression.

For me I think that being social requires all elements of our communication and I don’t think that instant messenger will do that just yet.

Maybe internet chatting in the future will bring all communication factors into play.

I think it is being social, because you are communicating and developing a relationship. From my point of view, however, there’s no intimacy, no connection through technology.

Skype and other types of video messaging do come very close to physical interaction, and is a good substitute when meeting up in person is difficult to impossible.

At the end of the day, physically being around people is the most important form of social interaction, because * hugs* is never as good as the real thing.

In my experience no matter how well you think you know someone online, the relationship changes as soon as you meet, often for the worse. I think this is because certain cues we rely on unconsciously to evaluate a friend are not available until you are face to face.