One is that these new media provide ways of maintaining friendships under circumstances where, in the past, those friendships would have quietly died because it was no longer possible to meet face to face. This is especially beneficial for our psychological wellbeing when we move as much as we now do, and so inevitably find ourselves in places where we know no one. Being able to contact old friends buffers us against the loneliness that would otherwise engulf us, and helps ease us into the new social environment by buying us time.
