How has social media impacted the way we communicate?
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By Alexis Ancel // Editor in Chief
It seems like lately there is nothing that Generation X likes to complain about more than Millennials’ collective addiction to technology and the consequent downfall of our society. But is that actually true?
During the first semester of my freshman year, I had a hard time making friends and adjusting to college life, and I found myself deep in the online world of the Taylor Swift fandom as a result. On late nights and weekends when I had nothing to do and seemingly no one to talk to, at least there were people on Tumblr who sent me nice messages for no reason and cared about the same things that I did. They posted photos of their pets and asked me about my day, and slowly it began to feel like I was forming very real connections with these people I had never even met.
Messaging turned into texting and texting turned into facetiming, and soon enough I felt closer to them than I did with people I knew in real life. That following summer, I took the bus to New York City to meet my friend Sofia for the first time, who I had been facetiming at least four times per week for months. From the minute we met, it was as natural and easy as it was with friends I’ve known since elementary school, just as it’s been with almost every other friend I’ve met because of the internet. I did eventually acclimate to life at HPU and I’ve made amazing friends here, but my Tumblr friendships still remain some of the strongest in my life. The internet made it possible to have friends from all over the world, and now I have somewhere to stay whenever I visit New York City, Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles and even Australia. Tumblr is the reason I studied abroad in Australia, the reason I’m moving to Manhattan after graduation, and the reason I have the most supportive and authentic group of friends I’ve ever known.
But even though getting to actually see each other in person isn’t easy, cheap or frequent, these are still the people who mean the most to me and would do anything for me. Sofia and Kelsea were my dates to my dad’s wedding. Meagan, who lives in Australia, invited me on a trip to Japan with her family just so we could meet. Turns out Sol and I are actually from the same town, but every time I go home, I still make an effort to see her more often than I see my high school friends. They check up on me when I’m having a bad day, send holiday cards and text my brother every year on his birthday. I would do anything for them and vice versa, and it’s definitely nice knowing that someone cares enough about me to put in the effort to talk to me every day, even when it’s not convenient. They aren’t my Taylor Swift friends or my Tumblr friends. They are my friends—friends I never would have known if it weren’t for social media and modern technology.
But make no mistake. I’m well aware of all the pitfalls of social media, and I fall victim to them as easily as anyone else. It’s hard to remember sometimes that Instagram is a highlight reel and that not everything is worth documenting. But even still, it always drives me a little crazy to hear people talk about modern technology like it exists only to corrupt the youth of America. If anything, the internet only improved my communication skills. After facetiming internet friends I had never met and flying to different countries to meet them, joining new clubs and talking to the person sitting next to me in class suddenly didn’t feel so hard. The internet yanked me out of my comfort zone by my hair, and actually made me a much more outgoing person in the end.
Of course our generation collectively spends too much time on electronic devices, but just because a relationship formed online doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Just because someone spends a lot of time on their phone doesn’t mean they don’t know how to communicate. For some, spending time online is what makes true, genuine communication possible.