How social media has changed our social skills

Hi guys. There is a paradox which I want to talk about in today's post: I am so grateful for how social media has allowed me to make so many good friends from all over the world - these are people scattered from Germany to Mexico to Australia to the Czech Republic to Chile to the Netherlands to America. This is because social media allows me to find content that suit my interests and that allows me to speak to people who do have the same interests - even if they might be halfway around the world. I hope to eventually meet some of them after the pandemic but even if that day might be some years away, I'm still very appreciative of the friendships we have nurtured through our online interactions. This has become especially apparent during the pandemic because we have not able to meet our friends to socialize in person even if they live just a five minute walk away; thus the actual physical distance between me and my friends becomes irrelevant as all the interactions have been forced online during the pandemic, whether they are 10 miles or 10,000 miles away. Thus I relish this opportunity to make so many new friends online of course and wish that this technology was available when I was younger; after all I am old enough to have grown up in the time before the internet, thus my social interactions as a student were pretty much confined to just the people who I could actually meet and see in person then. 

Let's go back to 1992 when I was in secondary school. The only people whom you could befriend were the classmates you encountered at school, perhaps your neighours or people you might run into if you take a class outside school for sports or music. Then there were your extended family members, trying to expand your network was difficult to say the least: so perhaps you meet your cousin at a family gathering and he finds out that you like to play basketball, he then says, "my best friend at school is also nuts about basketball, so I ought to introduce you to him." Sure there were companies that helped you find a pen pal halfway around the world, but having tried that scheme, it didn't yield great results. I did exchange some letters and postcards from people from random countries around the world, but ultimately, beyond a curiousity for other countries, these interactions were ultimately very shallow and superficial as we really didn't have that much in common. So in those days, if you could find a good friend from amongst the people you were thrown together with (such as your classmates), then good for you. But otherwise, if you really didn't like the people in your class, then your teenage years can be a very lonely and miserable time. I was lucky - when I was 15 and 16, I was classmates with a guy who liked the same kind of dance music that I did, it was enough for us to form a very close friendship over those two years. I have this memory of him calling me up in 1991 and he said, "you have to listen to this, I know you're going to absolutely love this." He had taped the song 'Get Ready For This' by 2 Unlimited off the BBC world service; he was right it was one of my favourite songs from that era. I have remained a massive fan of 2 Unlimited since. 

Today, if you wanted to find other fans of 2 Unlimited today, it would be pretty easy to connect with others through social media. Heck, at least 2 Unlimited were extremely famous back in the early to mid 1990s, so it wouldn't be hard to find their fans today on social media, but even if you had an extremely niche interest, you could easily find someone who will share your niche interest and even if you don't speak the same language, there's always Google translate to help you communicate. Oh I remember how we used to talk about how hard it was for teenagers to fit in at school, to try to find acceptance amongst their peers - nowadays, you don't need to do that: so what if you're nothing like all the other teenagers at school? Just go online and find someone who is just as weird as you! I actually find that very liberating - for example, the way I dress for the office is determined by what my followers on Instagram expect to see, rather than in a bid to fit in with my colleagues. After all, my colleagues would barely notice what I wear but with the right hashtags, I have managed to attract quite a following on Instagram of people who take great interest in my office outfits. I don't think my colleagues were offended in any way, even though I was in the same office as them, I was interacting with people far away in other countries through the power of social media. That's a far cry from the pre-internet days, I remember when I was in the army, when the people I worked with became insufferable, I used to read a good book to lose myself in the world of fiction just to escape from my immediate surroundings, but I had little choice: either get along with the people around me or be prepared to be very lonely - this no longer is the case for us today, thanks to the power of social media. 

The other side of this argument is that we are forced to develop much better social skills when we have to deal with people who are nothing like us, when we have to make an extra effort to think about how we interact with them, when we have to listen harder and pay far more attention - it sharpens our powers of observation. If you're in a canoe and you're traveling downstream, then you have to do very little as you will drift with the current. But if you wish to travel upstream against the flow of the water, then you would have to paddle very hard; the moment you stop paddling, you will drift in the wrong direction. Your arms are going to feel exhausted after traveling a short distance upstream whilst you can be very relaxed when traveling downstream. If you're looking to build strength and stamina, develop your upper body muscles, then you need to canoe upstream to get the kind of exercise you need for the desired result - simply drifting downstream might be a pleasant experience of course, but you're not exercising much in this case and you're not going to develop the muscles you want. I can see the difference between myself and my younger colleagues - some of whom are more than 20 years younger than me. They have grown up with internet technology and social media, one of my colleagues was born before I even graduated from university - in terms of her social skills, I see some aspects which aren't developed enough but after all, she is a product of her generation who have done the equivalent of drifting downstream effortlessly with the help of internet technology and social media when it comes to finding friends while I have had quite the opposite!

These relationships that we develop online can be a lot more shallow - allow me to give you an example: my regular readers will know that I am a big fan of the reality TV programme The Amazing Race and I even blog about it. Thanks to Facebook, I connected with many fans of the programme and this guy from America (let's call him Ron, not his real name) sent me a friend request and I have seen him online, he is very active in all the groups for The Amazing Race fans - we clearly have something in common. However, what I didn't realize was that he was a pro-Trump Republican and when I posted something quite rude about Trump (well, my readers will know that I hate Trump), he got seriously offended. And I was like, why Ron, I can say what I like on my Facebook wall (this was seen only by my friends and no one else) and if that offends you then e shouldn't be friends - within minutes, he unfriended me and did it bother me? Nope, I just shrugged my shoulders and thought, "hey, even Republicans can like the same reality TV programmes as us left-wing liberals, though we're never going to become friends even if we share that in common." Imagine if I had a colleague who was pro-Trump and anti-Biden, then I would have to navigate that awkward situation a lot more delicately rather than just look for the 'unfriend' button as I still have to face that colleague at work regardless of his political views. On the surface, it seemed that Ron and I had a fairly cordial friendship as we had plenty in common but in reality, it took just tiny one disagreement to end that friendship for good, proving just how shallow that friendship was in the first place. 

But when I compare the two generations, I believe that the younger generation are much better off today: let's create a fictional character called Tom - he is an awkward, geeky teenager with poor social skills. If Tom was 15 years old in 1990, then he would be very lonely and isolated, school would have been a very difficult experience for him as he would have had no friends. He probably sought solitude in reading books and magazines, but simply keeping himself occupied didn't solve the problem of his loneliness. Sure, he may get used to the loneliness but it doesn't change the fact that he is lonely. However, if Tom is 15 years old today, then he would have quite a different experience altogether: he would be on his phone all the time and even if he didn't have a single friend in school, he would be able to establish some friendships with people who share his niche interests online. Even if we accept that those relationships would be as shallow as the one I had briefly with Ron for a few months, I think this situation is a case of "something is better than nothing". Someone like Tom would be a lot less lonely in 2021 than he would have been if he was 15 in 1990. Social media is a big part of our lives now, of course I truly embrace it: I listen to a podcast which is done by a Canadian and a British guy, sometimes they are joined by an Australian woman and I think it is amazing that internet technology has facilitated such interesting conversations to come together despite these three people being on different continents. Thus for Tom in 2021, engaging people online is a lot easier eve if his social skills are rather poor and whilst he might be too nervous to speak to a stranger when at an event - it is a lot less daunting to simply join in a discussion online on a topic that he is interested in. 

I was very lucky in that I managed to develop the social skills I needed to get along with people around me but that took a while because I am really quite autistic; as I have Asperger's syndrome, I've always struggled with social skills. People like me were always a few years behind our peers, thus when I was 11 years old, the gap between me and my peers was rather large, but by the time I became 18, that gap had narrowed a lot and it disappeared when I became an adult. However, I got no help whatsoever along the way, it was just something I had to figure out on my own as part of growing up. Not everyone is that lucky - I'm seen people like 'Tom' in my time grow up from being socially awkward kids to become socially awkward teenagers and eventually turning into socially awkward adults. The absence of social media didn't force 'Tom' to develop good social skills back then, it merely left them isolated and very lonely. When it comes to social skills, you cannot take the approach of pushing a non-swimmer into the deep end of the swimming pool and expecting them to learn how to swim because you have thus created a situation where they have every incentive to stay alive by swimming. Some might learn under those circumstances (as I did, especially during my national service), whilst others like Tom may sink to the bottom of the pool and drown. I'm not saying that people like Tom can never develop decent social skills but I'm saying that they need help, they need someone to hold their hands and give them some lessons. Simply punishing them with isolation and loneliness isn't going to motivate them to figure it all out on their own. 

But of course, the pandemic has changed everything last year, especially when it came to our social interactions with our friends. This was a change that suited people like Tom, because everyone is forced online for their social interactions because of strict lockdowns. I'd like to think that when restrictions are slowly being eased (as they are in the UK now), we are now able to go out and meet our friends, resuming some kind of normality when it comes to socializing in person. So for example today, I met my good friend at the gym, we trained together and then left the gym together to take the train - it wasn't just training together that I enjoyed, it was just meeting him and talking in person that I missed. Sure we do message each other on Facebook from time to time, but it isn't quite the same as experiencing a real conversation face to face. However I know that many people like Tom will simply keep on interacting with people only online and forgo the opportunity to meet up with his friends because he lacks the social skills to do so. Let's not pretend it is easy: I was a part of a Welsh conversational practice group that met up regularly in London before the pandemic - admittedly, it is very daunting to go to meet a bunch of strangers and speak to them in Welsh, which is my fifth language. I could always switch to English if I really get stuck expressing myself but I can imagine how such a challenge may put off someone who lacks confidence to go to such a group, make loads of mistakes whilst trying to construct a basic sentence without feeling self-conscious about it. I'm now quite relaxed in that group, but oh I remember how nervous I felt the first time I attended. 

Perhaps it is unfair to claim that social media has had a negative impact on the social skills of young people if they are stuck all day on their phones instead of meeting each other to socialize - the technology has changed the way we interact with each other and thus our social norms are changing as well. For people like Tom, social media would be a godsend, allowing him to have friends online with people who share his interests, rather than being forced to try to get along with the people he has to face everyday (whom he might share little in common with). And looking at the way London is coming back to life after the last lockdown, there are still plenty of young people who like socializing in person. So that's it from me on this topic, what do you think? Can you imagine what your social life would be like without social media? Do you remember a time before you had all this internet technology or was this something you have grown up with? Are you able to make loads of friends on the internet or are you quite happily just consuming all this entertainment passively? Do you ever meet the friends you make online? Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.