As the majority of seniors depart for college, many of them have been active and engaged all over social media, finding their new classmates, potential roommates, and creating social circles with people they’ve never encountered face to face. This can be interpreted in a variety of ways, with some seeing it as a beautiful extension of the connecting abilities of social media, easing the huge social transition from high school to college by allowing for a cushion of acquaintances. This can also be seen as another encroachment by technology into the long cherished art of making friends with strangers.
I tend to lean in the direction of the latter opinion, seeing as these preformed social groups can many times restrict people’s ability to branch out and make new friends.
The vast majority of adults met a large number of their lasting friends during college
“My old friends, the people I still talk to, I met in college,” Math teacher Steve Walker said. “College allows you to branch out and find people with common interests. It contains you a lot less than high school does.”
Having recently gotten into college, I’ve seen these new ways of connecting firsthand. I’ve been followed by hundreds of potential roommates and friends from all around the country. To some extent, I feel that this minimizes the college experience to an extension of high school. By creating a net of students you already know, it disincentivizes you from actually expanding your circle.
“While I don’t think that it completely reduces your need to make connections, it definitely delays it,” Walker said. “Freshman year, I made a lot of friends through my random roommates and the people in my hall. If you box yourself in on arrival, that can delay the connections you can make.”
By finding a roommate online, and building a relationship with them, a relationship meant to be beneficial can become clingy. If one is more socially adept than the other, one roommate can become parasitic, restraining the other from finding friends. For these people who tend to get parasitic, getting a random roommate forces them to put themselves out there to make new connections at the risk of their own social survival.
However, instagram can convey some level of information about potential roommates.
“Instagram is definitely a good profile of a person,” Senior Lucas Kibreab said. “It can tell you a lot about a person’s hobbies, their interests, and a variety of other things.”
While instagram connections can be good to discern the bare minimum about potential roommates, overuse can reduce the college experience. People cannot be contained into a singular page on social media.
“I plan to find a roommate over instagram, but not someone I’ve met before,” Kibreab said. “I’ll use it to make sure they’re not fundamentally against my precepts, but not knowing my roommate very well is a good thing in my eyes.”
As students continue to look at their rooming situation, they should keep this in mind. While choosing a roommate they know can be comfortable and easy, it ultimately holds them back socially, reducing their college experience and leaving them at a disadvantage over the course of their four year experience.
