Listen to Your Elders
Jacobin contributor and former teenager Sofia Baker answers your most burning questions.
For the past few months, I’ve been out on medical leave from school. While it has been a trend for some time, something I’ve noticed, which has become even more pronounced, is just how many of my interactions with friends and acquaintances are now digital. While it makes sense to be isolated for the time being, I do think it would be worrying to continue this once I return to school. There’s no question that social media has brought us closer together, but paradoxically, it has led to a greater atomization and distortion of social relations. How should we go about reviving real-world interactions and community without dependence on digital forms of media?
— Anonymous, 18, Edison, NJ
Editors
It’s no great secret that young people today are feeling a lack of community; it’s the great irony of the internet. A big step toward reestablishing your social life is getting over the fear of rejection. Social media allows us to put up a front and live as the version of ourselves we want others to see, but it’s a lot harder to control the way we’re perceived in real life. People fear what others think of them; this outsider mentality traps them in a positive feedback loop of loneliness.
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