Trusting someone online you’ve never met isn’t trust. It’s a guess with a profile picture.

Trust is built from accumulated evidence about how somebody behaves when it costs them something, and a profile supplies none of that. What you have instead is a presentation, assembled deliberately, that can be anything the person wants. Feeling close to someone you have only read is real and it is not the same as knowing them.

Hold anything important back until there is evidence rather than warmth. Be slow with photos, plans, money and anything about where you live. If somebody online is pushing for secrecy from the adults around you, that is worth telling one of those adults about.