How would you feel if moving to a new town meant losing track of your friends? What if the only way of getting news from faraway friends was writing letters that took ages to be delivered? This was how things worked not very long ago. Thanks to advances in technology, how we make friends and c    1     with them has changed significantly.

Nowadays, we can move around the world and still stay in t    2     with the people that we want to remain friends with. Social media t    3     let us see what our friends are up to and maintain friendships. All you need is a wi-fi connection.

The digital age also enables us to find people who share our interests, such as collecting model cars or p    4     an unusual instrument. Whatever our hobbies, the Internet can c    5     us with others who also enjoy doing them, even if they live on the other side of the world.

But when you “friend” people online, does this mean that they really are your friends? It depends. If people always e    6     true personal information online, then yes, these friendships can be real and meaningful. But we need to keep in mind that what we see on social media is often not the whole t    7     about a person.

On social media sites, people tend to post only positive updates that make them appear happy and friendly. But smiling photos can h    8     real problems. Remember the saying: on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. A young person could be old; a woman could be a man; we could even be s    9     our information with criminals.

But this doesn’t mean that we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. A    10     technology has changed the way we acquire friends, the meaning of friendship and our longing for friends remain the same. As Aristotle said, no one would choose to live without friends, even if he had all other goods.

One of the main problems that a teenager faces is a lack（缺乏）of self-pride. A person with high self-pride can be c    1     and happy with their personality and their physical appearance. A person with 1    2     self-pride might be shy, anxious or unhappy with the way that they look. People w    3     feel this way often worry that other people do not like them, or might e    4     be afraid that their old friends do not like them! For example, perhaps a friend did not call when he said he would because he forgot that he had to visit his grandmother. A person with high self-pride might think that something h    5     to their friend to stop them from coming. However, a person with low self-pride might think their friend did not call b    6     they did not like them. Feeling this way often makes them look at things d    7     from how they are in reality（现实）.

A teenager’s physical appearance is often the focus（焦点）of low self-pride and most people experience these feelings at least o    8     in their life time. During their teenage years, their body will go through a lot of c    9    . It is natural to be anxious about these changes and it is important for friends to help and s    10     one another during these times.