social media – minn kim

College dating is hard in any generation (aptly put by this Cosmopolitan article) – it’s an incredibly selfish time where we have little inhibition and an overflow of freedom. Today, however, college dating has reached a new level of perplexity. With the advent of social media and the prevalence of text messaging, many twenty something year olds have no clue on how to connect romantically, and we blame everyone else but ourselves for failing to find love.

Let’s take a Thursday night. You get a text message that reads, “Hey, are you coming out to the bars tonight?” from a guy you danced with a week or two ago. You make some half hearted jokes defending your choice to stay in for the evening, and when it becomes clear that his insistence isn’t going to get him anywhere, the conversation comes to a close. This happens several times over the course of a few weeks, and while he appears to have no qualms about asking you to spend the night, his response to a suggestion that he properly ask you to lunch or coffee is lukewarm at best. You’re not heartbroken or jaded; neither of you really knew each other, and you were well aware of what he was asking of you. As Millenials, our generation has inexplicably accepted the disappearance of old-fashioned courtship when it comes to dating. We’ve embraced hookup culture and eschewed traditional gender roles leading to the demise of chivalry and a general sense of confusion on how to find love.

There exists a misogynistic myth that assumes girls are obsessed with finding romantic partners while guys see women as casual sexual partners. A few decades ago, this may have been true; many women did go to college and find husbands and while the stereotype may still be true of some women, current statistics on the overwhelming number of women versus men in college would demonstrate otherwise. Casual sex is also no longer a domain solely for men, and our generation’s general acceptance for greater sexual freedom allows for both women and men to engage in stringless sexual experimentation. Ironically, this newfound freedom has only made it more confusing for both men and women when it comes to romance because no one is as forthcoming about wanting to truly pursue anything beyond the physical.

The lack of forthrightness and general passivity breed grounds for a dangerous perception of misguided feminism. Women view sexual liberation as an opportunity to reject traditionally feminine characteristics such as being overly sensitive or emotional to instead embrace the devil-may-care attitudes more traditional of men. This makes it hard for everyone in the dating pool because it perpetuates the all-too-familiar need to act cool.

We’ve seen it happen before, if not been guilty of it ourselves: the silent competition between two people in a relationship for who can care less. Girls agonize over text messages in an effort to sound interested but never too interested while guys make sweeping vague statements that mask their desire for commitment. Wanting more became uncool, so everyone tries so hard to not care. And even worse, somehow we believe the person who cares less has the upper hand in a relationship, so everyone tries even harder to appear aloof.

Then there is our baffling aversion to labels. If you start hanging out with a guy regularly, when does it go from a thing to something more? If you never define your commitment levels to each other, are you bound to the other person or is it more of a open relationship? When we avoid labels, we further complicate college dating by making it acceptable for people to treat others with indecent respect. And by labels, I don’t mean that every person has to be your boyfriend or girlfriend. Simply being honest and respectable about where each individual’s intentions lie would clarify potential misunderstandings. When we treat the dating scene as a commitment-less game, we fail to hold ourselves accountable for making someone else happy or being responsible for how they feel.

Ultimately, our generation is failing to find love because we are so busy acting cool. We see vulnerability as a vice, so we make efforts to protect ourselves against rejection. Coincidentally, that means putting up walls and being vague about our intentions and desires and caring less as a means of emotional security. In doing so, we won’t get hurt, but it also means we may miss out on truly connecting with someone. If we don’t allow ourselves to be honest and let our guard down, we may never find that emotional intimacy we are looking for with another person. Navigating the winding path that is the college dating scene would be far less complicated if we all decided to stop pretending not to care. Instead of waiting on someone else to read our minds and hand us our happiness, it’s our responsibility to communicate candidly about what we want. Playing emotional games is a waste of time for anyone in any kind of relationship, and we all deserve more respect than that.

We live in an age where face-to-face communication has been replaced by email and texting conversations. Social media and the Internet, albeit a great resource to stay in touch with long-lost friends or family far away, fuels our need for instant correspondence and inevitably affects our abilities to partake in a true, in person conversation.

Ironically, all our technology savvy makes getting to know someone that much harder. The use of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and countless other social media outlets allows us to gain intimate insight into the lives of basically anyone we are “friends with” or “follow,” yet simultaneously poses a veneer of impenetrability. It also makes us prone to some stalker-like tendencies. That cute guy you saw at the bars last weekend? Give it a few clicks and you’ll know which high school he attended, what he’s doing now, and who his friends are all before you’ve even introduced yourself.

These habits feed our incessant need for control and instant gratification; we want to know where that person of interest is from and what he’s up to because we’re trying to figure out if he fits our criterion for that all elusive “ideal person.” Problem is, by judging an individual from his online presence, we cheat ourselves from actually getting to know someone and learning of their interests, passions, and backgrounds.

As a self-proclaimed control freak, I’m guilty of this habit. I tend to want to know all these details about someone I’m interested in even before I’ve expressed any sort of interest in him. It’s understandable; the information is readily available and we want to know if that person fits the bill and would be “worth” our time. And sure, becoming Facebook friends with your crush can give you a glimpse into snippets of his life: that summer trip to China, Christmas with his grandparents, or his older sister’s college graduation. But that’s all they are – snippets. In order to see if there is a genuine connection, it’s important to have conversations and build a rapport. That way, when it is time to decide whether or not your person of interest is someone worth investing your emotions into, you can be confident in your decision. So as terrifying as it may be to suggest coffee with the guy whose only correspondence with you has been through text, one face-to-face conversation can tell you more about where your relationship (or non-relationship) is headed than a hundred text messages.