My friend Danica Radovanovic, whom I have never met face-to-face, sees a paradoxical quality in some online social relationships.

Danica

Virtual relationships like those formed in twitter and facebook typically lack the binding strength of relationships formed face-to-face.

Yet she finds there are people who prefer virtual more than real-world relationships.

The virtual relationships are seen by people she knows, online and in some cases offline, as safer.

In one way or another, they allow those people to avoid a real or perceived risk of embarrassment that direct self-disclosure might bring.

She wonders if we are beginning lose ourselves in virtual relationships, and by doing so forfeit something of our "real-world" life.

I share those concerns.

Her views of online/offline separation are certainly stronger than mine, perhaps in part because they were first formed in different online environments.

She writes of online identities as "nonexistent," whereas I think of them as in most cases direct extensions of valid, living person.

I still feel there is evidence that if we manage them well, our virtual relationships enrich our lives.

Remember, earlier online interaction led people to be more socially active, rather than less.

I suspect that in most cases the anxiety-plagued, who choose online over offline for a time, eventually find online the self-validation required for them to fully rejoin the face-to-face world.

With regard to those of use who are not anxiety-ridden, I agree with Jeff Jarvis that "living in public could keep us closer as people and might even make us more civil and tolerant.

Yet those tentative (for me, at least) convictions and broad surmises should be put to the scientific test, as Danica has suggested in various communications.

Social networks have many millions of users. Facebook alone has 50 million active users and as Jarvis notes, the marketing firm Alloy reports that 96% of teens and tweens use social networks.

Use of social networks either has already become or is becoming effectively universal in the best-wired parts of the world.

The answers to Danica's questions are far too important to leave to the vagaries of hunches based on one individual's or a few individuals' online experiences.