How “Followers” Become Friends

In this day and age with so many different social media sites, you may wonder what you might get out of joining them. Some use social media as a way to let their personality shine. Some use it as an escape from reality. Some use it for entertainment. Some use it to keep up with their friends personal lives. Some just use it because it is what everyone else is doing. Whether you are one of these people or not, most people use social media in some sort of way. When using social media, how many of you would think that you could actually make some real friends with some of your followers/friends?

The first social media site that I used was Twitter. I got a Twitter account partly because everyone else had it, to keep up with others, and also to interact with my friends. I never believed that I could make any new friends on social media. I also was a naive seventh grader with over-protective parents that were incredibly afraid that I would be stalked or “catfished.” It was not until my senior year that I realized that I could actually become real friends with Twitter followers that I didn’t know/see in my daily life.

My senior year of high school I got accepted here, at the University of Kentucky and immediately worried about roommates. Nobody that I knew was going to the University of Kentucky, so I considered having a random roommate but that didn’t settle well with me. I began to search on Twitter and found people with bios that had “University of Kentucky ‘19.” I immediately looked at some girls and reached out to them through direct messages on twitter. After talking to about 15 girls, I found a possible roommate. I also found a lot of girls that had personalities like mine. I am friends now with about 10 of the 15 girls that I reached out to my senior year of high school.

I never believed that I could make new friends on social media. Once I came to the University of Kentucky I contacted a lot of these girls and was able to meet up with them. Some of them were in some of my classes. Some ended up being in my dorm. Some ended up joining the same sorority as me. The girls that I met on Twitter are some of my very close friends today. They helped make the transition easier. Although, it could sometimes be dangerous to reach out to followers that you don’t know, they could make good friends.