Is a relationship through Facebook worth it?

Subha Sundar Ram, a third-year journalism student, has to use social networking sites constantly to keep herself abreast of what is happening around town.She didn’t find anything wrong in displaying her picture on her Facebook page, while blocking all others from viewing her other pictures. However, recently, she started getting friends’ requests from unknown people, who keep sending her sleazy messages. “These messages were so disgusting that I removed my picture and replaced it with a cat holding a gun,” says Subha. “Now, these friends’  requests and messages have stopped altogether.”A self-confessed Facebook addict, Subha claims she remains offline, and never indulges in chat. “I restrict myself to only posts. There are several fake people out there who just want to strike a friendship and enter into a relationship on Facebook.”A relationship on Facebook? Very much possible, if a suicide note of a BPO employee who ended his life recently is to be believed. In the suicide note, the man allegedly confessed that he strangled his wife because of her over-involvement with the social networking site Facebook in which she had six “boyfriends”. Is it possible to have “boyfriends” or “girlfriends” on Facebook? Nivi Sathya found one for herself on Facebook. She narrates, “It all started when I commented on one of my friends’ pictures in Facebook. This guy sent me a request and we started chatting. It has been almost one-and-half years, and we are in a relationship.”According to Dr V Muthukrishnan, consultant psychiatrist, Apolla Hospitals, people resort to social networking sites or other Internet sites because they are emotionally deprived and lack a healthy social life.  “Most of these relationships fail because it is done for leisure. Netizens try to compensate what they lack in real life in the virtual world,” he says. But Nivi has a suggestion. She says, “A relationship does not depend on where it starts, but the way it goes. So it is with people who are involved in that relationship. It depends on how they take it --time-pass, enjoyment or with sincerity.”