I’m going into my third year of college, and I have not maintained a single friendship since I’ve started. I’ll meet people in a given semester, and we exchange numbers to study together, help each other out with homework, and talk about classroom material. However, after the semester ends I often don’t have classes with them anymore, and the relationship ends because we no longer have anything to talk about. People say college is supposed to be the best four years of your life, and while I’m not having a terrible experience I do get lonely at times.
I think this is a more recent phenomenon I have experienced with my children of GenX or millennial. It seems kids are being told to interact with people who can help you, but it ends there. There’s very little of going out of your way for someone and expecting that in turn. Remember you only need a couple good friends. you don’t need the so-called “fair weather” friends. Be a friend to make a friend. Keep looking and make your school what you want it to be. Cut your losses with people you know are only going to use you, and invest your time in people who you care about and who you want to care about you. Remember to call home and stay in touch with your true friends and family even if they are not at school. You need to be reminded that there are people who love you and care about you.
Do you ever invite them to go to campus activities? “Hey the student union is sponsoring that big concert…you going?”
Also can you join a club, espcially a service related club so you spend time with people?
Unfortunately, a lot has changed, socially, since your parents and some of us “elders” attended our universities.
The advent of computers and cells phones has been good in terms of business and access, but it has been bad for social awareness.
When we were in college, we didn’t have cell phones. We had to talk to each other and study and pool our resources at the library because we didn’t have the internet. In our dorms, we had to fix doors, hang posters, try to open windows, find laundry quarters, irons(!), laundry soap, etc. We learned to play poker. So we spent hours with our classmates, ordering pizzas at 2am, developing great relationships and friendships.
This has all changed. Look in any restaurant or public place and you will see everyone attached to their phones.
So you have to work at maintaining friendships the way that we did, without focusing on phones and internet games.
I get what you are saying and can empathize. It really is NOT you, but a reflection of the current culture.
My dd originally had difficulty at her university. She has very good friends from her college now because of what she did while at her school. She went out of her comfort zone and started talking to her classmates in her major. This was a shared interest, so it was something they had in common. She formed study groups and volunteered for her acquaintances’ activities when they needed help. She wasn’t in their face, but was helpful and dependable in her study groups.
All you can do is be a good person and be known as a reliable and dependable friend. This should make you invaluable as a friend.
Based on what you said, your conversations only revolve around the homework and class material. Therefore, once the class is done there is nothing left in common to maintain the connection. You need to expand beyond just that class. Explore if there are common interest outside of the class that keep you connected.
Like the poster above said, do you ever expand beyond and mentioned a campus activity? All the friendships I made in college were with people who shared common interest with me outside of the classroom. The class only lasts a semester but a common interest in arts, sports, etc. goes way beyond a semester.
I think that your experience is common. Relationships are more likely to last if you have activities in common. This is one argument for getting involved in campus activities. While classes end after one semester, clubs and other campus activities can last at least until graduation.
I have also heard that university is supposed to be the best four years of your life. For me this was very much NOT true. Things get more settled and for many people better after graduation.
I feel bad for your generation (and those to come). The IPhone and technology have changed everything, especially personal relationships. I keep hoping there will be a movement to put the phones away and get back to actually interacting with people in person. Everything now is instant and immediate gratification. People expect this and just don’t invest themselves like they used to when life was much slower and much more simple. I don’t think you are alone in your feelings. If anything, I hope that fact makes you feel better.
I agree^. I went to college 30 years ago. I was shy and introverted, but I did want to meet and have friends. All it took was to get out of my room and go downstairs to the dorm lounge where everyone who wanted to socialize hung out. We had a TV area, a couple of video game machines, and a few sitting areas with chairs and couches. The dorm I lived in was co-ed and had a floor for grad students (mostly international) so the lounge crowd was diverse and definitely not cliquey like in high school.
I compare that to what I see my daughter’s experience will be and I feel kind of sad. I already think she hasn’t had the opportunity for a normal social life since she went to a private high school 15 miles from our home. The student body came from about a 30 mile radius in all directions so few of her friends lived close enough to get together with often, especially since most of them didn’t and still don’t have their driver’s license (a topic for another thread - but my kid finally got hers mid senior year). She does have one friend that lives less than half a mile away, but in four years they have only gotten together a handful of times aside from organized parties within her friend group. I ask her why they don’t hang out casually more and she just says she feels weird about bugging her :-??
Her younger sister goes to the local public high school and has friends who live closer, but she also rarely gets together face to face with them - she’s content to communicate with people non-stop via texting and snapchat.
Anyway, I envision my older daughter’s college experience to be very different than mine - with kids hanging out in their rooms texting on their phones and watching netflix on their computers instead of seeking out and interacting with people in person. She’s going to a very small school and I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I’m hoping she’ll find her people.
There was actually an article in the Atlantic very close to being about this. I read it last night; let me see if I can find it.
Have smartphones destroyed a generation?
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/
I don’t know your entire situation, but from your post it seems like the friends you were making were only people who shared classes with you, and thus all you mainly did was converse about the class material and study together.
You want friends outside of your major/classes that you are connected through shared interests and synergy of personalities - that’s what make friendships last. You will have more to not only talk about, but experience together.
Yes, the younger generation has been blighted by distracting and attention-seeking technology. Human relationships are more than just being Facebook friends. Make sure you develop deep, rather than superficial friendships.
JenJenJenJen…thank you for that article. Its spot on!
@Darren2020 I’m sorry you are going through this. The article posted explains the phenomenon but be sure…there are kids out there like you that want personal face to face relationships. My D is one of them. She is perplexed by her peers who have phone in hand at all times, who are scrolling while she is trying to have a discussion, who seem to value their web lives more than the persons standing in front of them.
While I believe the Iphone and technology are somewhat to blame, I put most of the blame on parenting. Parents who use the internet as a babysitter (like the tv in the 70s), who encourage technology at a young age (letting toddlers watch television), have no issues with their pre-teens holed up in their rooms for hours at a time on their computers. How about we bring back family game night with no phones in sight? Camping and hiking with no phones in sight? Limited screen time? Insisting on teenage jobs?
I have one friend in particular who tends to scroll on her Iphone while we are visiting. We are in our 50s. I have recently got to the point when I say “maybe another time would be better for you, I don’t want to take 2nd place to your darn phone”. Maybe we should all start doing more of that.
None of this stuff about phones has anything to do with making friends. OP’s problem is not knowing how to translate an acquaintanceship born of necessity into a friendship where you hang out even after the class/club you share is done. Posts #2 and #4 hit the nail on the head.
Yeah, can we please stop with all of the “technology is what ruined culture”? A strong +1 to @bodangles here.
It’s a bit sad (but not surprising) that this thread went off on this unrelated tangent, but I really think this needs some good clarification. There are obviously certain cultural differences, and sure, phones have had some influence, but so has everything else. To zoom in on a single aspect and make stereotypes is missing the bigger picture.
@“aunt bea” 's post skates around the original problem at first.
This is a very real effect that can be best summarized by the change in the communication of daily knowledge. You don’t need to knock on doors because there is a group chat for the floor. You don’t need to ask someone how to fix a door because there’s a WikiHow article on it. The internet solved these problems and made them easier. The result of that is not a generation glued to their phones, but one that changed their method of communication.
What that does lead to is decreased required time needing to be social. Friendships are formed by that prolonged, mundane time spent with others that forms a stronger bond over time. Fewer requirements for interacting in person over prolonged times means less of that. And that effect is real.
However, the answer is not to become a Luddite, but simply to realize that it requires more effort to be social, more than any time before now. This would be the same no matter the “generation” of people. It’s also why some types of introverts often seem more exhausted than in previous generations.
The above perfectly describes the effects of this: less forced social interaction leads to less deep connections. That said, it’s also important to realize that “technology” can’t be used as a catch all term. Ever wonder why all the people who grew up with technology from birth love Snapchat so much? It’s because it’s a richer social experience than texting. While it’s not the same as in person interaction, it allows someone to feel much closer to you and begin to form those stronger bonds. It’s actually quite remarkable.
For any parents, I encourage you to try it out, even regularly communicating with your kid by it (if they will allow it, but a bonus is that no one can see your friends list on Snapchat. It’s not like bugging them on Facebook.). It’s a great way to keep up with someone daily who isn’t in the same location. Of course, it’s an addition, not a supplement. Have them keep calling you regularly too. 
But I know multiple parents who have started up using it and ended up getting immense value from it, getting a better look into their kids lives they always wanted in a non-buggy, intrusive, or helicopter parent manner.
Now that we’ve zoomed out a bit, let’s check the below out:
These are the dangerous stereotypes we should be avoiding. To generalize a bit over these, I would make two key points:
- Using technology is not inherently antisocial, and many groups of young adults and teenagers are not this way at all in places like restaurants, etc. Watching Netflix can also be a social activity (movie nights I'm sure were a thing even before the ease of TV/video of today). I love watching TV, but I also rarely do it alone. If someone is texting, you should first be examining who they are texting and why. It's possible they are fostering or maintaining another relationship in the process. Basically, you've got to look more closely than "they are texting". Phones are such a versatile tool that can facilitate many interactions. You can't equate all actions on a phone.
- As mentioned in one of these, life is a lot more complex now. Again, being a Luddite isn't really the right answer, it's adapting to fit social needs while dealing with the current complexity.
- I would add in this video, excusing the bad audio quality. Bo Burnham is a really relevant comedian to the cultural conversation here, and again, very popular in college aged students right now. I'll leave that with no further context.
I don’t know why the “myth” of college being the best four years of your life is so ingrained in young people today. When I was growing up, my dad told me about his college days. He went to college to get an education, and he paid his own way through odd jobs like working summers digging ditches, working at a slaughter house and a radio repair shop, and ultimately joining the military and jumping out of airplanes for the GI bill to help pay for college. Even with all that effort, he didn’t have enough to eat, so would go into cafes and snack on the free crackers. My only thought about college was that it was to get an education so I could make a better living than without the degree.
Did I have fun at college? Yes and no. My favorite time in college was actually when I co-oped and left campus to spend a couple of semesters working for IBM in a major city far away. I really bonded with the other co-op students there, and had the time of my life. My actual time in college was spent plodding along doing my best, and making some less than ideal friendships. I didn’t worry about that though, because I had never been led to believe that I was missing out on something if those years were not a social paradise.
No matter how it may seem when you look around you at college, I can assure you that there are thousands of students just like you, wondering why they are not having loads of fun and making tons of friends in college, and thinking there is something wrong. There is nothing wrong at all. Don’t let it stress you. Just keep at it, and do try some of the recommendations to find activities where you will see the same people for longer than just the length of a course – either through clubs or sports or a part-time job or volunteer work.
I’m not BASHING the very technology that I use. If you were able to get the gist of what I was saying, I was giving the OP a history of why “college being the best time of life” interpretation occurred in earlier years. For the OP, it is partially NOT his fault that people told him it would be the best time of his life. You misinterpreted my intent.
No, you don’t need to do anything in person now, because everything is available “virtually”. You, as a recent college student have that option. We were “forced” to communicate with people around us, all of the time. We had to communicate IRL because we didn’t have the options that you do.
My children, initially, all went through all of these tough social challenges at their colleges. For you to state that it is not occurring because all they have to do is virtually communicate is naive and concerning. Look all of the posts that relate to feelings of isolation and loneliness on this forum. Look at the increases in anxiety and depression.
My children figured out that they had to get out of their attachment to a screen and actually do things with people-move in (can’t move clothes/bath items in virtually), go to the commons and EAT (can’t virtually send nutrients to your body yet).
: Which is why I get paid **beaucoup bucks ** NOW to teach people and companies how to communicate. Emails, texts, snapchats, instagrams, tweets get misinterpreted all of the time. My allied health partners in psychology who work with adolescents and young adults have full appointment books.
This OP asked for help. He didn’t ask for a platform for you. You misinterpreted.
See also:
“While I believe the Iphone and technology are somewhat to blame, I put most of the blame on parenting. Parents who use the internet as a babysitter (like the tv in the 70s), who encourage technology at a young age (letting toddlers watch television), have no issues with their pre-teens holed up in their rooms for hours at a time on their computers. How about we bring back family game night with no phones in sight? Camping and hiking with no phones in sight? Limited screen time? Insisting on teenage jobs?”
There’s a lot of soapboxing going on, almost none of it relevant.
I have found that the easiest way to make friends as an adult is to become super-involved in clubs/organizations that I like. Simply just joining the club/organization has never worked for me. Rather, taking on some sort of leadership/cabinet position in the club/organization has always worked, because you (usually) work closely with others to plan and run the organization. I’ve met some of my best friends this way.
Is here an student club/organization that interests you? If so, join that club and become very involved in it. You will make friends, have stuff to do during your “down time,” do something you feel is worthwhile, and can also possibly add something to your resume.
All of my post started with support for original suggestions and a direct qualifier that this tangent was not related to OP very much. I was responding to the many quotes in this thread that missed the bigger picture for the “ugh kids and their technology” without really understanding what is going on.
I was not responding to you alone, but many others in the thread. As it has been pointed out, your post also went pretty far away from that gist you intended. Additionally, I also was agreeing with your first quoted analysis more than disagreeing.
Last I checked my post directly acknowledged the problems. My post was pointing out that the shift is cultural as much as technological. I directly supported other suggestions for solutions in this thread. I agree fully that going out of your way to create in person interactions/events is a positive solution.