I have been without a phone this past week. Apparently, I dropped it and left it underneath a seat in my dad’s car, where it had fallen. As a result, I have been without the ability to text people, call people or check Instagram. I can only access Facebook and emails while in front of a computer. This makes certain things, like trying to set up interviews for a story or coordinating with academic advisers, very difficult. I have been resigned to using the computers in the library on almost a daily basis to check emails. I am unaware of changes to classes or appointments because I do not have my online life in my pocket. People talk about the times changing when they mention how social media has become a part of our lives, but it goes deeper than that.

As students take their first steps into a new semester of college, they realize that socializing is a gradual, yet significant, process that can direct the course of their lives at Stony Brook University for the next four years or so. In the age of technological communication, we have never seen a greater emphasis placed on knowing what’s what and who’s who through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other forms of social media. Ask a typical student how he or she makes friends, and an immediate response will be: “Through Facebook.” In a mere decade, technology has taken the form of a medium through which we can share every moment of our lives as we experience them. Although Facebook offers networking opportunities, long-term problems remain hidden under a thick layer of status updates, likes, comments and tweets.