By MAGGIE ANDERSON
Staff Writer
An article issued by the New York Times talked about how students are navigating socially-distant friendships. The article talks about how less time with friends and classmates in general has taken a toll on many friendships. In today’s society, one would expect that with our technology and amount of time spent on our phones, it would be easy to keep in touch with fellow students from school. However, this does not seem to be the case. The author, who is currently a college student, talked to others and got their views and experiences on how this has affected them and their friendships. A majority of students interviewed had said that responding to texts, direct messages, snaps, etc. started to feel like a chore early on into quarantine and that they just let some friendships go because there was absolutely no communication being done. Another observation made had to do with the interactions we need as teenagers and young adults. We’ve gone to school our whole lives, surrounded by kids our own age, people we can relate to. That is the norm. We don’t know any better, so when COVID-19 hit and schools shut down, we began to struggle. As students we thought of this quarantine as an extra long spring break. Fast forward almost 7 months later and we still can’t go back to school. With the circumstances, “going to school” is depressing. Most students sit in a room all day alone staring at their computer screen with little to no interaction with a person their own age. As students, I think we can all agree that it is depressing. As teens, we crave the interaction and the face to face conversations. It’s hard to maintain social skills, friendships, and healthy mindsets when everything we are used to is stripped away from us. Additionally, no one knows when we will be able to get back in the classroom and feel a bit of normalcy.