Graphic by Samantha Lopez | Mercury Staff
Social life at UTD is a
varied experience, affected by student workloads and the way people socialize
in the age of the internet and social media.
On the UTD subreddit,
there are a myriad of posts from students asking for friendships, new clubs or
to meet up. Biology junior Sana Salam made a Reddit post asking for friends after
running into various difficulties in consistently meeting new friends. Other
students always seemed to be busy with schoolwork or otherwise.
“I mean, there’s a lot of
people, but I feel like it’s really hard to meet up with our schedules,” Salam
said. “I guess you can meet some people, but it’s hard to actually keep meeting
them and actually be friends with them, you know?
For Salam, her post was
successful. She met various people, including a fellow classmate that she is
now good friends with. Reddit provided another avenue of meeting new people,
and even though she shared a class with someone, it was through Reddit that
they became friends.
“One of the people I met,
I’m really good friends with now, because I realized she was in my calculus
class,” Salam said. “And if I didn’t make that profile, if I didn’t text her
and meet her in person, I wouldn’t have known that she was in my class.”
Salam is part of 6.9% of
people surveyed by The Mercury that mainly met new people through social media.
The survey of 131 people found that other ways people met others was through
classes for 32.8% of respondents and in student organizations or clubs for
27.5%. However, the way people hear about the certain clubs and organizations
or even meet people in their own class vary. For Salam, it was Reddit. For
students like computer science freshman Jan Morgenstern, it was Discord and
word of mouth.
“Most of the clubs I’ve
found that I’ve been interested in have been through Discord and through
talking to people,” Morgenstern said. “If I want to know about something
someone has or whatever, I just strike up a conversation. It’s not hard for me.
I guess it’s just hard talking to them again, finding them again, first of all.
And then recognizing them.”
How do these different methods
of finding people compare? Senior Arts and Humanities lecturer Allison
Templeton said that social media has helped certain people find a voice in an
online platform.
“There’s a lot of pros and
cons,” Templeton said. “There’s a lot of research that talks about being an
introvert really can help people in an online platform, because it gives them a
chance to speak still and give a voice.”
Templeton also agrees with
Salam’s earlier sentiments that today’s students tend to keep a busy schedule,
making it difficult to organize social activities. Students tend to follow a
set schedule of eat, sleep, study and repeat. Social media tends to align with
this lifestyle better.
“It’s become more of an
ability to be quick. Quick messages, look at pictures quickly so I can be
present but then get back to my life or back into my world … The case is, you
go, you have your schedule, you go to class, you’re ready to leave, you go get
something to eat, you go do this, we’re busy,” Templeton said. “We live in a
fast-paced world … and we sometimes don’t stop to think, to actually look at
the person next to me and just small talk.”
Social media is just a
more comfortable tool to use for the current generation of students, Associate
Dean of Undergraduate Education Shelly Lane said. It helps reduce social
anxiety by providing a familiar barrier, because the current generation of
students grew up with technology.
“You have grown up with
technology, and you’re much more familiar with that,” Lane said. “It’s much
easier … to text or to post something than it is to go up to a person and say,
‘Hi, my name is so and so, I want to be a part of the club.’”
Clubs are still a very
popular method of meeting new people, as evidenced by the 27.5% surveyed that
use them, and finding the right club instantly connects people with other
like-minded individuals with similar interests or majors. There are pros and
cons with this approach as well. While posters seem to be effective,
Morgenstern said that resources like the website Presence — an online database
of all on-campus organizations and clubs — can be outdated.
“It was hard for me to
find (clubs) that I liked,” Morgenstern said. “I know that there are a lot …
but if you go on the Presence website, you don’t find a lot of information
about them, current information. And you don’t find a lot of chats they’re on.”
Ultimately, Salam was able
to find connections over Reddit. In the modern age, people are using the
variety of tools given to them to socialize and connect with people, whether it
be through social media, clubs, or just talking to interesting people on the
street. For Salam, finding people on Reddit was ultimately comforting.
“That is very nice,
knowing that a lot of people kind of struggle making friends just as you, and a
lot of people are in the same boat and a lot of people have busy schedules and
still want to meet people,” Salam said.