I am taking a class this semester on the subjects of communication, culture, and community. One of the first concepts we've addressed is the importance of community and how the modern United States appears to have lost it. I would have to agree.

With the growth of suburban neighborhoods and a lack of public places to easily engage with members of one's community, we have become more isolated and cut off from community than ever before.

Thinking back to my childhood days, I remember feeling stuck in my house, believing there were no other children to play with because the majority of my interactions with others never extended beyond the end of my street. Besides houses, the nearest building was a five-minute car ride away, so traveling anywhere without a parent was out of the question and relatively impossible.

Moving forward into my highschool years, I attended a school in another county, meaning I had to travel about 30-40 minutes (depending on traffic) there and back each day. Because most of my classmates lived farther away, meeting up outside of class was a rarity. The inconvenience of the drive and the need for gas money often left me stranded in my house, leaving me to turn to television, social media, and online games for entertainment.

My dad used to tell me how every morning in elementary school, he would make the ten-minute walk to school with friends he would meet up with along the path. Later after class, they would take their bikes and ride to all the local shops, go exploring in their small town, and drown the streets with sounds of laughter and youthful conversation.

I always looked at that kind of childhood as a dream, the kind of one you saw in old shows from the '70s. Now we have online communities, virtual spaces in which to connect with likeminded people, discuss every kind of topic, and form bonds between people across the world. We are social people, but it seems that as our relationships extend beyond the web, our physical spaces of interaction and connection are quickly disappearing.

While modern suburbia has granted us privacy, more acreage, and a personal escape from strangers, it has also left us lonely, bored, and isolated. Will the internet serve as a new platform for community, or will society be able to rebuild the physical places of community that we have lost?