In the present day, it is no secret that most millennials tend to be glued to their phones. Our batteries are drained within a few hours because of the constant pop-up notifications from Snapchat, Instagram and iMessage. While there are pros and cons of the growing technology available at our fingertips, there is one outcome that I've come to realize after my first semester of college: social media is changing the way college freshman are adapting to college.
Being away from our parents for the first time can be a scary adjustment; however, now we have the ability to be in constant contact with our families, even though many of us opt not to. We can substitute the familiar hug from our moms with a quick text telling her how much we miss her when we don't have time to entangle ourselves in an hour-long phone call.
Instead of struggling to find spare change for a pay phone, my dad and I can exchange gifs at any given time just to make sure he knows I still remember him. We can even FaceTime them when we are feeling a bit more homesick, which in my family means getting to watch my puppies squirm in confusion because they can't figure out where my voice is coming from.
Our trendy parents have grown to take on Instagram, Facebook and even Snapchat. When we cautiously decide to go out on a weekday, our parents are watching our Snapchat stories from behind their phone screens, silently disapproving and waiting for us to wake up the next morning to scold us.
Now, they can watch with every post to put faces to the name of our new friends and how much we are enjoying our new home. Or in my dad's case, it consists of commenting on every single picture I post to remind me to do my schoolwork. Similarly, they can reciprocate by posting about what they are up to and using 'Throwback Thursday' to reminisce about the times when we were all way too young to think about college.
But it doesn't just help us stay in touch with our parents.
No matter how many miles my friends drifted for college, we are always there for each other. I still FaceTime my best friends from home just to exchange stories. I usually am the one to receive calls late at night because I was the only one who happened to stray into an earlier time zone.
We still ask each other for advice on which picture to post on Instagram, normally followed by a later text saying, "Like and comment!" For those friends who I don't talk to daily, our contact consists mainly of tagging each other in memes on Instagram, and it's just as flattering as a text would be.
Whether or not you are in favor of the growing obsession with social media, any college freshman would admit that it helps immensely to ease the transition. College is notorious for change, but thanks to social media keeping us interconnected, finding a way to stay rooted to your family and friends makes your time apart smoother.
