in class, I fully compensated for on Face-
book messenger. As a somewhat shy and
awkward kid in middle school, it was
quite nerve-racking to talk to girls with-
out some sort of third party judgement
from my friends or my mother. There-
fore, whatever I wanted to say to people
of Facebook seemed to be limitless. In
fact, whenever I go back and read those
messages, I still blush a little bit at my
attempts to flirt with girls in the most
corny and tragic way possible. There-
fore, it was an actual nightmare when
one morning, my mother had conve-
niently found that I had forgot to log out
of my Facebook account and decided to
read every message I had. I came back
from school that day and was forced to
listen in horror as my mother analyzed
every message I wrote and asked to me
to explain what I meant by them.
To this day, I will never understand
the motivation behind why of parents
forbid middle school relationships.
Like honestly, what’s the worst thing
that could’ve happened? I don’t know
a single person that looks back at their
middle school relationships with any-
thing but a grain of salt because of how
cringe-worthy they were. Also, I will
never understand my own mother’s
motivation for trying to find as much
information as possible about my peers
through Facebook. You’re not going to
learn anything about a girl in middle
school by looking at her Facebook pro-
file, beside the fact that she went to Dis-
ney World over the summer through
her profile picture and maybe her Farm-
ville score.
Despite this traumatic event, that
wasn’t the last time I flirted with a girl
on social media because social media
has kept growing. A large number of
our interactions with people are carried
out through our phones. When I had
gotten my first iPhone in high school,
my limited use of social media started
to grow as I joined other social media
platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram
and Twitter. At this point, I remem-
ber my mother feeling a little anxious
because she just couldn’t keep up with
all of these different mediums. There-
fore, after a day of scouring the internet
for information about these different
apps, she aggressively started to preach
against the use of social media. At the
time, I would simply roll my eyes and
came to the conclusion that my mother
was insane.
But it wasn’t until I was in college
that I really started to value interact-
ing with people in person, and I started
to realize that my mother’s frequent
tirades against social media were for a
good reason. There have been a count-
less number of recent studies that link
social media with teenage anxiety and
depression. People care too much about
how many likes their Instagram photo
gets or why their crush on Snapchat has
left them on “opened” and the hourglass
emoji has appeared (which signifies the
end of a “streak”). All of these aspects of
social media just add on an unnecessary
amount of stress to one’s life.
But let’s unpack that. What does it
mean when a person likes your photo on
Instagram or Facebook? A “like” would
probably be the equivalent of a person
coming up to you in person and say-
ing, “Hey, I like that photo you took,”
or “Hey, you look really good in that
photo,” and so on. But Instagram has
replaced a meaningful human interac-
tion with the simple and convenient tap
of a finger on a screen. Snapchat isn’t any
better. While one may argue that having
a “streak” of 100 days shows dedication,
it really doesn’t. Let’s be honest — out
of the 100, 10 days might be actual sub-
stance and the rest are just Snapchats of
your forehead, random out-of-context
selfies or even better yet, Snapchats of
the wall or the ceiling. One of my best
friends has been Snapchatting a girl for
almost a year now, went to high school
with her and has a class with her now in
college, but has still yet to have a single
conversation with her in person.
And look, I can’t completely attack
social media, because I do frequently
scroll through my Facebook timeline
and occasionally post photos on Insta-
gram. And yes, there are good uses for
it. I’ll probably be sharing this article
on Facebook in order to get my friends
to read it. However, what I do find dis-
turbing is that our use of social media
is giving us an excuse to not interact
with each other in person and is trying
to replace a very healthy social interac-
tion.
So this Valentine’s Day, be bold and
go take a risk. Go talk to that person
that you’ve been crushing on from afar
or have been Snapchatting for a year
now. Don’t scroll through this person’s
Instagram or enviously look at photos
that your friends are posting with their
significant others. If you’re watching a
romantic comedy, don’t do it alone with
a quart of ice cream. Instead, do it with
friends and surround yourself with
people who care about you. And last
but not least, don’t be me from middle
school and flirt with people on Face-
book messenger. If anything, go out
there and have these experiences first
hand, in real time. I do realize that this
does have the potential of going terribly
wrong, but at least you’ll have a good
story to tell at the end of it.
Wednesday, January 16, 2019 // The Statement
7B
Wednesday, February 6, 2019 // The Statement
7B
I
’ve had very little experience
with love. But I have seen
enough romantic comedies
starring Ryan Gosling and have lis-
tened enough songs by Rex Orange
County and Frank Ocean to at least
know that Love is a complicated
emotion. It’s not an emotion like
happiness or anger, where most of
the time, we know how and when
to register these emotions. Love, on
the other hand, is something that
we’re still trying to figure out as
young adults. But before I start try-
ing to talk about something I am very
unqualified to talk about, I’m going
to take us back to a time when Love
was nothing but a complete mess.
Middle school is an interesting
time for love, and yes, in case you
were wondering, I could hear every-
one who’s reading this article groan
as they start to recall their awkward
middle school relationships. But
here’s how I see it. In elementary
school, girls and boys are constant-
ly at war and trying to torture each
other on playgrounds. But as soon
as the sixth grade rolled around and
Bruno Mars came out with “Just
the way you are,” every 12-year-old
guy was trying to find a girl to sing
it to. And while every girl in middle
school dreamed of serenade from
Justin Bieber, the boy who had his
haircut and wore too much Axe body
spray in her Spanish class seemed to
come in a close second.
When I was about to start middle
school, my parents and I moved to
Bangalore, India from Ann Arbor.
Around the same time, my parents
started to view themselves as the
more “modern” and “cool” version
of Asian parents. Therefore, when
it came to girls, my mother made it
explicitly known to me that girls
who were “friends” were completely
fine with her, but girlfriends were
strictly off limits. And just like that,
by allowing me to interact with peo-
ple of the opposite gender, my moth-
er had thought she had made some
incredible progress to the Asian
parenting
model.
Nevertheless,
whenever my mother would see me
hanging out with a girl from school,
she continued to insist that I told
her everything about her just so that
she could go on Facebook a couple of
hours later and continue her investi-
gation.
Therefore, when I had finally got-
ten a Facebook account in order to
“keep up with my friends from Ann
Arbor,” it turned out to be a god-
send for my middle school social life.
Because whatever game I had lacked
Loving is
not easy
Poems for
the loved
and lonely
Where Love is Real
There is a place where love is real,
And after hate is concealed,
And there the sky is kind and blue,
And there the grass is jade dew,
And there the robin has a soft coo
To warm in the tomato sun.
Let us leave the place where the ash
grows white
And the dull sidewalks are steel.
Past the ditch where the tar roses
bloom
We shall stride with a stride that is lei-
sured with doom,
And gaze where the gray-rust needles
zoom
To the place where love is real.
Yes, we’ll stride with a stride that is
leisured with doom,
And we’ll go where the gray-rust nee-
dles zoom,
For the youngsters, they spot, and the
youngsters, they loom
The place where love is real.
Empty
A heart
Easy to break
Pick yourself up they said
Days dragged on, everyone moved on
No more
BY DEVAK NANUA
MiC COLUMNIST
BY RAHIMA JAMAL
MiC COLUMNIST
Read more online at
michigandaily.com