If I am asked to say where I belong – where I feel most understood and connected, and where my loyalties lie – it’s not a place. Or, at least, it’s not a physical place. I don’t care about anthems or the colour of my passport. We’ve reached the twenty-first century, baby! My identity is digital and my home is online.

The first time I used the internet it was to send an email. I was in my fourth year at secondary school in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland; so, I was probably fourteen or fifteen, it was 1990 and the World Wide Web (and thus web pages and browsing) hadn’t even been invented yet. We were, if memory serves me correctly, doing some nebulous bit of a geography lesson termed European Studies, connecting to a school somewhere else in the UK for the few minutes it took to switch on the computer, open the line, and hit Enter. Nothing really happened.

Things I have accomplished via the Internet since then: made friends, searched for song lyrics, made more friends, watched porn, set up bank accounts, carried out research, met my husband, spent long and exhausting hours scouring Mumsnet while attempting to get my baby to sleep, sought help, applied for a divorce, made more friends, dated, met my next husband (an upgrade), taught classes, got cancelled by the UK government for retweeting Parody Liz Truss. (That last part is entirely true, and I have the Subject Access Request to prove it.)

Friends are the constant. I was at the right age to throw myself into the early online communities, beginning with the somewhat niche landscape of folk music, progressing to the irreverent and creative madness of B3ta, into Facebook groups for mothers and academics and swimmers, and academic mothers who swim, and onwards to Twitter where I still cling to what’s left of Elon’s whims.

My best friends today are those I met online. Many of them have become fully realised from their cyber form, taking on tangible shapes, no longer just odd usernames and familiar text patterns. We sidled into back rooms in pubs where we picked up conversations and turned them from digital traces to sounds. Online, I could tell them everything. And I did.

My best friends today are those I met online. Many of them have become fully realised from their cyber form

There is a phenomenon known to researchers of human-computer interaction where people are happier to confide secrets and stories via a keyboard. The machine doesn’t judge us; it gives us the opportunity to confide without observation. Words spill from our fingers onto the screen. The anonymity doesn’t always hide us; sometimes it reveals us. We remake ourselves line by line, our own styles emerging through the sentences we choose. The topic doesn’t always matter because it’s the rapport that brings us together.

In March 2022, I was a guest on the Irish comedian Tommy Tiernan’s chat show where we talked about the things I study. “Getting texts and voice messages, that’s not actual communication, is it?” he asked. I had to reply with a question: “Why not?” Because it is, even if it is remote. Even if I never meet in person those who have shared something of themselves with me. I gave him this story:

I became a single parent very suddenly (and unhappily) when my daughter was five and I was approaching 40. My husband walked out and I was left picking up the pieces while trying to work full-time. In a Facebook community of women in academia, I met others who were parenting alone – some by choice and some by necessity. A handful were in the UK, but most were in the US, and between us we supported each other round the clock: a second opinion on our hesitant decisions, shared fury at the raging unfairness of exes, or encouragement and joy at new and happy things.

We listened when work fucked someone over, and when better jobs were secured. We shared dating stories, commiserated at break-ups, and congratulated weddings. We were stunned by grief when one of us lost her child. We were left reeling once again when it happened to another of us.

“Those women were there for me,” I told Tiernan. “They’re on the other side of the world but they’ve been through the same things I’ve been through, and we were able to use technology to keep in touch. That, to me, feels like it’s a proper friendship. We’ve never met but we’ve formed a bond. People do that all the time. One of the really beautiful things about the internet – for all its downsides – the really powerful thing is that it brings people together.”

For every person styling their life on social media, there is someone online meeting their tribe. For every troll there is a community delighting in shared interests. There are 5.16 billion internet users out there. You will find solace. You will belong.

Kate Devlin is an academic and author of “Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots” (Bloomsbury, 2018)