Erin Chong is a cognitive systems student in her final year. With a background in human-computer interaction research, she is curious about how people use technology and how to design it to better serve everyone.
It’s a familiar scene for many of us — you’re sitting in a lecture hall full of unfamiliar faces. When the professor announces a quick five-minute break, rather than taking an opportunity to introduce yourself to your classmates today, you instinctively reach for your phone.
You scroll through Instagram and watch stories from people you barely remember meeting at that one party last semester. You like posts from classmates you’ve never spoken to after your group project together. We can all be guilty of it, the need to pass the time and see what we might be missing out on, despite missing the potential connections right next to us.
And I know we’ve heard it countless times before from our parents, professors or maybe that one friend who proudly tells you that they’re “off the grid” or on a “digital detox,” that social media is ruining our brains and our lives, it is a time waster and a distraction. Yet, despite this, for many it still might be the first thing you check in the morning and the last thing you see before you close your eyes for bed. Why? I think it is because we want to stay in the loop, keeping up with club events, new opportunities and social plans. We’re afraid that if we disconnect, we could miss out on something important.
Consider this: while our social media accounts may be filled with hundreds or maybe even thousands of 'friends' how many of them would we actually stop to wave or chat with if we passed them on campus? We add new faces as contacts, but never end up speaking to them again. As university students, we are surrounded by opportunities for new friendships and experiences. Yet at times it seems like we are alone together. Striking up a conversation with the classmate next to you can feel unnatural, even wrong.
Mark Zuckerberg, built Facebook as a Harvard student with the aim of connecting college students at a time when the internet lacked ways to connect you with the people you care about. Yet today, social media has evolved to enable us to disengage from the people around us.
A 2014 study published in The Australian Educational and Developmental Psychologist highlighted the paradox of social media by noting that, while it can create greater opportunities for social connectedness, it can also be a “source of alienation and ostracism.” While these platforms might seem useful to help us stay connected to our friends at different universities or back home, they can also contribute to social isolation.
In fact, a 2023 cross-sectional study in Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine found that those who use social media with the intention of maintaining their relationships may feel lonelier than those who spend the same amount of time on social media but with different motivations. This may be because the interaction qualities they are seeking do not match what they receive from using social media, the study concluded.
Spending excessive time online might allow you to maintain your old connections, but I argue that it might also come at the expense of forming new ones.
First-year students in dining halls might text friends from home instead of conversing with someone new. Instead of joining clubs or attending campus events, it’s more comfortable to stay in your dorm on a video call. While maintaining friendships is important, it can also mean missing out on a valuable part of your university experience — meeting new people.
Of course, disconnecting entirely from social media isn’t always a simple choice. Many students rely on it for practical reasons like asking a classmate for notes from the lecture you missed, staying up to date in your group project’s group chat, hearing about clubs or being invited to gatherings. It’s not entirely our fault that we feel the need to stay online when so much of university life is now mediated on these platforms. Rather than expecting ourselves to fully abandon our social media accounts, we should focus on learning how to use them intentionally.
This isn’t about giving in to online FOMO, but rather acknowledging that a significant amount of campus life is now communicated solely through social media. For students without an established network like first-years, transfer students or exchange students, it would be unrealistic to assume that they should delete social media when it is a primary way to discover events and opportunities.
However, since our generation grew up with little government policy or regulation around social media as most rules were set by the platforms themselves, the responsibility of moderating our use has largely fallen on us. The first step towards finding balance is recognizing this and making more mindful choices.
Interestingly, a 2020 study in the Frontier in Psychology journal found that intrapersonal motives, such as using social media to pass time, forgetting the complications of everyday life, remembering what was done and to record everyday life were one of the strongest correlates with problematic social media use (PSMU). To me, this highlights the importance of identifying and aligning our intentions behind using social media. Moreover, researchers in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) field explained that tools designed to combat smartphone overuse are increasingly focused on “targeting the quality of phone use in addition to or instead of quantity of use.”
In order to make the most out of social media while staying engaged in university life, try aligning the content you consume more closely with your interests. Maybe there is a club you have been meaning to join, hobbies you are interested in or campus events you’ve always wanted to attend. Use what you consume as motivation to get involved, meet people and build meaningful connections while you have the chance. If you enjoy creating, social media can also be a great way to document your university experience, such as filming short vlogs of your group’s study sessions at IKB or taking pictures of the Wreck Beach sunset views.
There are plenty of apps and hacks out there to help manage screen time. Some popular applications suggested by technology magazine CNET include One Sec, Forest and Opal. Alternatively, some opt for switching their phone to greyscale to make it less engaging. You can experiment to see which strategies work best for you, but ultimately, the key is to check in with yourself. Is the time you spend on social media adding value to your life? When you look back on your university years, how much of that time would you have wanted spent on your phone versus building connections and experiences?
By using social media more intentionally, whether to discover new opportunities, foster in-person connections or document meaningful moments, you can navigate its paradox and find more balance. With greater awareness, social media can serve as a bridge towards connection rather than a source of isolation.
This is an opinion article. It reflects the contributor's views and does not reflect the views of The Ubyssey as a whole. Contribute to the conversation by visiting ubyssey.ca/pages/submit-an-opinion.
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