Social media has made me more socially awkward.

Photo by Ismail Hamzah on Unsplash

I’m a genuinely happy and friendly person. It’s not based on some misguided self-perception either. It’s really how I feel most often and how I have felt for most of my child and adult life. I never really had a problem saying hello to complete strangers, nor did I avoid it. Heck, I sometimes went out of my way to say hello to people I didn’t know.

Most of my friends and family had always commented on my friendliness and my approachability. I genuinely liked people and was most often curious about them.

However, something happened that has made a simple smile from a stranger make me feel like I’m a leper.

I was at the T stop waiting for the subway. When a nice elderly lady wearing one of those large Sunday-church-style hats, slowly eased onto the bench right next to me. She took her hat off and started waving it to cool herself down. The only reason I noticed was that I didn’t mind sharing the breeze in the hot summer heat.

Like most commuters, I sat there scrolling through my phone with my white earbuds dangling from my ears. These days headphones in/on the ear tend to signify to commuters and fellow travelers, “don’t talk to me.” However, it didn’t seem as though she got the memo of that social norm. I could hear her mumble something under the vocal-less, trance-like beats pumping into my ear canals. I assumed that she was trying to tell me something. So I gently took off my left earbud to hear what she said.

“I’m sorry. Excuse me?” I politely asked her and slowly pulled out the white earbud, as if I was signaling to her that she had to repeat herself. I guess I wanted her to know that I wasn’t trying to be rude but that I was just blocking out the outside world to focus my attention on my “smart” phone.

She smiled, turned her attention to me, and raised her voice. Thinking I might have a problem with my actual hearing, she leaned toward me and said “It’s going to be another hot day! Right?”

My eyes squinted up at the sky toward the bright blaring sun, and I said, “Yes, ma’am. It looks like it.” I then proceeded to put my earbuds back in my ears to re-signal that the conversation was done, and looked back at my phone screen.

I heard her muffle something again, then I repeated to take out the same earbud, in a sort of deja vu action, and said, “I’m sorry. Excuse me.”

She leaned in again and spoke in a louder voice as if I was one of her peers who just received a cochlear implant.

She told me that she was going to see her granddaughter at one of the local Boston colleges. She had traveled from up north, somewhere in southern Maine. It’s been some time since she’s seen her ever since she started college.

I was quite aware that I was only giving her story about 40–50% of my attention. However, I was really interested in getting back to the stream of pictures that my friend had posted from his trip to Greece. The last picture I was looking at, was of the white sand beaches from his Mykonos view, which was of his sandy feet and a bottle of beer overlooking the waves rolling in. It was Instagrammed filtered like one of those Corona Light Beer commercial photos.

It wasn’t even original. It was like many other photos I’ve seen from countless other friends, celebrities, acquaintances, or even random strangers. However, I couldn’t help but be drawn to it with such jealousy and envy.

I don’t know when this happened but many of my closest friends have expressed the same sentiment.

I suspect that this is a direct result of social media platforms [SMP]. We don’t necessarily need social researchers and behavioral scientists to tell us what most of us already know. Most of us can already feel it within our gut that we have developed an unhealthy habit with online SMPs. We have an innate need to feel that we’re not alone, or irrelevant. This drive is the fear of missing out [FOMO] effect. We try so hard to keep up with friends and family and followers online which creates a false sense of social realities.

I’ve already have been getting hints of this feeling every time I’ve experienced an awkward glance from someone who doesn’t seem to understand my subtle humor, or when someone dismisses my annoyed grievance. I know we’ve all felt it and we quickly look back at our phones to get that quick fix [of likes, and thumbs ups] to feel a little less than relevant.

I know it’s doing some harm to my social dynamics and my ability to relate to others, but it’s doing the same to others as well. I have to keep telling myself that I am not alone in these feelings, nor am I the only one who believes that they’re not good enough. Armed with that knowledge, I have taken upon myself to try and strike a healthier balance with engaging more with people in real life [IRL] and with being more conscious about the SMP triggers of 👍❤️👏.

I already know how to be social in person. I’ve done it in the past, and I need to re-adjust those skillsets. I have become too focused on trying to satisfy other people’s social awkwardness at the risk of exacerbating my own. All it takes is me being more of me, rather than what others expect from my social media handle and the rest of the online followers.