Since the early days of Internet diffusion, in the mid 1990's, virtual sociability has been raising a great discussion. In contrast to the contacts between acquaintances made possible by landline telephony, Internet collective interaction environments generated the possibility of meeting people and making friends exclusively online. In those early days, these virtual relationships were strongly criticized. Nowadays, we realize that the relationships mediated by the new telecommunication networks (Internet and cellular telephony) still provoke radical negative reactions. The present paper aims at restraining or at least decelerating the diffusion of such reactions. For this purpose, it takes the recent work of a renowned sociologist - Zygmunt Bauman - as an example of this kind of view and confronts it with various results from national and international research. Such procedure allows for the presentation of an alternative view of different types of virtual interaction and virtual relationships made possible by different technologies.
virtual relationships; Internet; cell phones; Zygmunt Bauman