Why Herd Mentality Is Killing Relationships
As I sat down twiddling my thumbs waiting for class to start, I looked around me and saw nothing but people engrossed in their phones. No one was talking to anyone near them, and the only sounds were slight chuckles on occasion followed quickly by silence. People were communicating with others halfway around the world, while at the same time trying to stifle the slightest bit of human emotion with the people right next to them.
Earlier this year, I visited my brother and sister-in-law in Seattle while on break from college. My brother is 12 years older than me, so he’s had a while to reflect on his college experience and learn from it. I use this age gap to my full advantage, and always ask him questions about anything and everything I can think of. We started talking about social media and how different college was for him back when Facebook and Snapchat weren’t even around(read-as: they actually talked to the people in their hall and classes). My sister-in-law mentioned she had recently deleted Facebook, and I thought why not try seeing what college life was like back in the 2000’s. I figured the best way to stay off my phone before class was to delete my social media apps, so I did. Then I made it a goal to actually branch out and talk to strangers in my classes, hoping to make some friends in the process.
As I sat there waiting for class to start, and everyone else was buried in their phones, the entire reason I had deleted these apps in the first place had immediately became irrelevant. The herd of people using social media didn’t care that I had left it — in fact, they couldn’t care less. The herd was still there, and was going to continue to be whether I was in it or not. I may have deleted social media off of my phone, but since no one else had, it was still strange to talk to someone while they were scrolling through Instagram or engrossed in whatever their ear-buds were playing at the time. Instead of me being in my own little phone-bubble, I was now outside of it, staring at a bunch of other little bubbles. Social media may let you communicate with someone across the world, but it makes you too busy to communicate with someone sitting right next to you. It has created a more connected world yet at its core — social media is inherently un-social.
Of course, I’m not trying to deny some of the benefits — social media wasn’t named in irony. It was meant to bring people together, and create a community of people online. Just recently my Dad got in touch with a friend who he hadn’t seen in 40 years through Facebook. A coworker of mine told me how she’s been able to keep up with a friend that she met at camp 5 years ago because of Snapchat streaks. Of course social media makes it easier to reconnect. That’s the whole point. However, these moments would have never happened had an organic friendship not been made. If you’re too busy staring at your phone at camp or in class, how are you ever going to meet people and have the opportunity to utilize the benefits of social media down the road? You can’t expect to have these friendships 40 years down the line if you aren’t building them now. At a time when we’re supposed to be creating new relationships and meeting lifelong friends, it seems like we’re too busy watching what Sally did at the bar last night to make an effort to talk to someone new.
My social media experiment was only supposed to be for the month of January, but once I re-downloaded all the apps I deleted at the beginning of that month, I realized I hadn’t missed out on much. Speaking to my brother about it, he told me something that truly made me realize the frivolity of social media. There is no actual value in knowing what Sally did last night, reading what Jonah Hill tweeted recently, or watching how a triple chocolate cake is made (although I must admit I do love a good ‘Tasty’ video). Spending all of your down time staring at your phone and mindlessly scrolling through Facebook or Reddit doesn’t help you become a better person. It doesn’t help you create friendships, (although it may strengthen existing ones), and it certainly doesn’t help you when you miss class and don’t have anyone that can send you notes.
It’s not that I’m telling you to delete your Facebook, or to not watch Sally as she takes her 5th shooter, or to never take a picture solely for the purpose of posting it on Instagram. Do all of these things and enjoy the benefits of social media; no one else has had the opportunity that we do and thus by all means we should take advantage of it. What I am saying is that during the times when you could be doing something — anything — that might bring you closer to making a new friend or reaching that goal of reading a book a week, do that instead of wasting your time watching Sally throw up everywhere and get kicked out. Then maybe one day we won’t have to worry about fighting the herd as we try to make friends, and can feel comfortable talking to someone without having to worry about interrupting them as they retweet memes on Twitter.
