'Electronic pen pals' buoy our lives with fun news

Many of us remember that when we were children we had a "pen pal."

These were often people we didn't even know in person. The pen pal could be far away across the United States or somewhere abroad. Usually they were people you "met" through a club, or charity, or church group.

Basically you wrote letters back and forth to each other - reading and learning about a new country, or life in another state, about new ideas and activities, new foods or different holiday celebrations. It was so interesting to get those letters.

Well, email and texting, (and Facebook), all work something like that today. You you can have "electronic pen pals" and friends, and I do! Great fun.

Some are old friends that I haven't seen for years. How nice to be back in touch even though we live far away from each other.

Some start as new friends you met on a trip or student exchange program and now are part of your pen pal network.

Some are friends who live much closer but for various reasons you cannot see them often. For instance, I have two good friends in downtown Chicago, but I rarely go downtown these days. I used to work downtown so saw them easily. But now we are in frequent contact - electronic pen pals!

Some are friends or neighbors in the local area but I don't see them every day so it's a good way to keep in touch with current news and activities. Two are dear next-door neighbors who moved away last summer for a new job. One is dear friend Pat in New Hampshire, whom I only see once a year.

Some are people you've never met in person but instead met through social media or a shared interest in a good cause. I have a wonderful pen pal who is a reader of this column, whom I've never met in person. So nice to have this new online friend.

Even family members living far away become sort of modern pen pals. Unlike the letter writing of old, you can easily stay in touch and abreast of family events and what's happening in each other's lives and families.

Why is all this important to managing long-term grief?

Well, I've written in many ways about how vital it is for a person with long-term grief to stay in touch with family and friends, to guard against social isolation. I am here to say, there are few things more cheering than looking at email over morning coffee and finding a message full of news from a relative or friend, or feedback from a reader, or photos and video of my granddaughter's wedding that I could not attend in Savannah, Georgia.

There is a big controversy - whether online friends are really friends. That is, can you be friends with people you've never met, or rarely see?

Well, my answer is "Yes." I learned through years of global business projects - that, if possible, it's good to meet at least once in person at the beginning, then it's easy to carry on long-distance electronic collaboration to get the project done.

But this first face-to-face meeting is not completely necessary - and many friendships form strictly online. Somehow the person became visible to you through social media, or a shared hobby, or an organization supporting a good cause.

Even though electronic communication has its shortfalls, its amazing how effective it is for keeping in contact. Electronic "pen pals" provide an avenue for staying in regular touch with events and feelings.

Sherry Turkle, a professor at MIT, has built her career on studying and understanding the development, evolution, and impact of online communication. We went to graduate school together, so I have followed her work closely.

She has explored pretty much all the pros and cons of being attached to, or relying heavily upon, our electronic communication devices.

Her books, especially the last one, ("Alone Together," 2013 and 2017) is really helpful for understanding the effects of electronic communication on human behavior. In the balance she finds electronic communication is a plus, as long as it doesn't take over, and you set some boundaries, and also keep up and cultivate your face-to-face social contacts. Balance.

So the point is - establish and keep up with your modern day electronic pen pals and be in maximum communication.

You'll enjoy news from your pen pals and will get some good ideas. I just made a delicious Thai chicken noodle soup, a recipe from an email pen pal friend I've never met in person. Definitely a like-minded friend about cooking any many other interests and values. You never know!

• Susan Anderson-Khleif of Sleepy Hollow has a Ph.D. in family sociology from Harvard, taught at Wellesley College, and is a retired Motorola executive. Contact her at sakhleif@comcast.net or see her blog longtermgrief.tumblr.com. See previous columns at www.dailyherald.com/topics/Anderson-Kleif-Susan/.