For many, virtual worlds and communities are an important part of their lives and exist in online forums and chat rooms. A forum is a site for members, which is solely based on the conversations of those members in the form of ‘threads’. Some forums are linked to sites which tend to appeal to a particular interest group; moneysavingexpert.co.uk has a forum with numerous threads which all have a money saving bias. Forums probably span the whole gamut of interests (some more mainstream than others).

One of the popular areas for forum discussions is parenting, from trying to conceive through every stage of pregnancy to birth stories and each following stage of development. Most internet savvy mums or mums to be will have consulted an internet sites like babycentre.co.uk or netmums.co.uk and may well have joined the forums to ask for advice or to offer opinion on the latest pram, baby fashion dilemma or child health and welfare.

Forums can offer valuable support and if you are lucky you can find real friends that can go beyond the screen name and avatar. It’s not surprising that strong bonds are forged when most dedicated forum users are on line everyday ‘talking’ to the same people about every aspect of parenting. The community aspect really comes into its own when one of the members goes through a challenging time. In my forum life I have virtually ‘held hands’ with numerous friends going through very difficult times and have received support in return. It is very strange how involved you can become in the lives of a group of strangers that on the whole you haven’t met. I have been delighted to hear when someone struggling to conceive finally gets a positive test result or when someone going through chemo gets an all clear. However it is not all good news and there are people struggling through very difficult times.

There is a wealth of information available from the thousands of people in virtual communities, if you don’t know something or want advice or information why go to Google when there are hundreds of people who probably know the answer already and whose opinion you grow to trust. Obviously there is a balance because there also seem to be some who use the forums and their forum ‘friends’ as some kind of replacement for real life friends and also rely on the forum to guide every decision from what should I have for dinner to what should I name my baby.