Years ago, going away to college meant saying goodbye to all of your friends from high school – and I mean really saying goodbye. You wouldn’t see or speak to them until you went back home during the holidays, unless you spoke over a good old-fashioned phone call.
However, in today’s generation, technology bridges this gap and allows students to easily stay in contact after high school. Popular social networking sites include Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Now you can even see your friends by Skyping them or video calling them on Facebook. It’s like you never even left. This seems like a beneficial advancement in technology, but is it?
Is it necessarily a good thing that at a click of a button all your high school friends can see what school you’re at, if you’re in a relationship and what’s on your mind? Part of me thinks that technology has ruined the reunion of high school friends over the holidays where everyone gets together and tells tales of what has happened in their lives while they’ve been at college.
Nowadays, you can just quickly scan someone’s Facebook page or Twitter timeline, and without even communicating with that person, you find out everything you want to know. Seems to me that our generation may be in danger of becoming antisocial. Perhaps the old-fashioned social way of life is the best.
But then again, without this technology some high school friends would lose complete contact with each other. Some might say these websites and applications are making people even more social and extending their social life like never before. Also, it’s much easier to inbox your friends on Facebook than to call them or wait until Thanksgiving, right?
So what do you think? Is technology helping or hindering us? Either way, make sure you stay in touch with high school friends whether it’s a tweet or a surprise visit when you come home during the holidays.
Emma Bowman is a sophomore majoring in mathematics.