The complicated digital aftermath of break-ups

Today I discovered that Techcrunch, one of my favorite websites for reading digital news, has a new column called #Love that explores our complicated relationship with technology in the dating realm. I've always been fascinated by how social media is changing our relationships with people, especially when it comes to dating. This article explores one facet of our love triangle with technology: The digital aftermath of a break-up. You know, the little, unwanted reminders of your ex-boyfriend that pop up in your chat boxes and minifeeds when you least expect it.

"No matter how it ends, or how it evolves after it’s over, every relationship has an echo. Today, that echo lives on the Internet."

The "echo" that lives on after we get dumped (or do the dumping) is something we all respond to differently. Jordan Crook, the author of this article, talked to several of her friends who had recently experienced a serious break-up. She concluded that how we handle the digital "echo" depends a lot on the nature of the break-up and each person's needs for moving on. She explains that people must strike a balance between "push" and "pull." The "push" is the little reminders that are thrust upon us unexpectedly online, and these are the ones we try to avoid when we block or unfollow our exes. The "pull" is when we seek out knowledge on our exes' lives by "stalking" their minifeeds.

I found this piece to be thought-provoking and very relatable. Almost everyone has experienced the digital complications that arise after a break-up. My most serious relationship lasted all through high school and ended after we both went to different colleges. We'd spent countless times together for four years, so the memories, both online and off, were everywhere. The struggle for me was deciding what was more important: Staying friends and being able to see what was going on in his life through Facebook and Twitter, or blocking him and drastically improving my chances of moving on.

It was my first time dealing with the online aftermath of a breakup, so I vacillated several times before settling into a comfortable balance between the "push" and the "pull." One of the most important things I learned, which has greatly alleviated the pain during my future breakups, is to minimize the "pull." Actively seeking out information on your exes' happenings and whereabouts too soon after a break-up is almost always self-destructive. Crook aptly relates people's behavior on social media after break-ups to the idea of a "success theater." Both exes will be much more inclined to tweak and tailor their feeds to put the best and most fun aspects of themselves on display. After all, people want to give off the image that they're happier and better off after a break-up, even if the opposite couldn't be more true. The problem then becomes that whenever we "pull" for information, we see all the fun things our ex is doing without us, which makes it even harder to keep our chins up and focus on our own lives.

Crook also talks about the "break-up makeover," the common practice of cleaning up our profiles after we get dumped. I've personally observed that everyone does this differently, usually depending on the terms on which the relationship ended. After a nasty break-up, people are way more likely to cut their ex out entirely, wiping out any digital trace of them from their profiles. It starts with unfriending and unfollowing, and then with deleting photos, sometimes to the point where an unaware person would have no idea the relationship had ever occurred. If the breakup occurs on more amicable terms, people may stay "friends" on Facebook, but then the little unexpected reminders occur more frequently and can sting just the same.

Having grown up in the digital age, it's hard for me to imagine a time when these considerations were not a normal part of dating and break-ups. But my generation was the first that had to learn to cope with the myriad of complications that arise when our relationships IRL collide with our digital lives. We've had to learn as we go, using a series of trials and errors until we strike a comfortable balance we can live with. It's uncertain territory, but we're getting better at it with practice. I think we're learning to exercise more self-control online, averting our gaze from our exes' posts when we know it will harm us and focusing instead on using social media to further our own happiness.

Gretchen, stop trying to make #nocializing happen!

I am trying to make #nocializing happen. And fortunately, I don't have a posse of Mean Girls squashing all of my ideas.  But before I introduce the term "nocializing" and why I think it has potential to make it big, let me talk about what I think makes something go viral in the first place.

In my opinion, the two single most important elements to make something go viral are timeliness and humor. Take for example when the refs called a technical foul against Coach K in the ACC tournament finals (Did Duke win?) after he threw his Expo marker onto the court in frustration. Tons of people were tuning into the game, and it was kind of an absurd foul to call (as much as I welcome any personal foul called against Coach K, however unwarranted). Within minutes, some clever, quick-thinking person created a Twitter handle called "Coach K's Expo Marker." The marker tweeted things like, "I don't deserve to be treated this way. Please retweet for all of the abused markers out there." It was an instant hit and garnered thousands of followers by the end of the first half. And then we all know the pioneer of well-timed viral content: Oreo. Its "You can still dunk in the dark" tweet during last year's Superbowl power outage has easily become one of the most-talked-about cases of a brand successfully leveraging social media.

Now on to my idea for something that could go viral. First of all, I can't take credit for the term "nocializing." One of my friends coined it when he took a photo of me and a few others fishing by the pond, only to discover the photo revealed all of us staring down at our phones. "You guys are nocializing hard," he joked. And then I realized how perfect it was.

It's timely. It seems like everybody (or at least our class) is talking about how the iPhone has taken over our lives and rendered us all incapable of living in the moment. I don't entirely agree with that, but I know we've all been in situations with a big group in which you suddenly look up and realize you've all been sitting in silence typing on your phones. It happens pretty often, and its frequency coincides with my generation's reevaluation of the role technology should play in our lives.

It's humorous. The larger the group, the more amusing. Extra points for the more absurd locations, like when we were all caught "fishing" by the pond. Here's a photo I took of my friends nocializing on a roof during last week's burst of warm weather:

#nocializing

See how fun it can be? Nobody's safe. Start targeting the antisocial and let's make #nocializing happen!

Don't blame the phone, blame the one who holds it

In class yesterday we had an extended discussion about the effects of technology on our lives. The conversation centered around three questions:

1. Have we stopped living in the moment?
2. Is conversation dead?
3. Is social media making us sad?

We ultimately decided that to each question, the answer is sometimes "yes"and sometimes "no." It might seem like a convenient way to avoid taking a clear stance on how technology is affecting our daily lives, but the way I see it, there is no other choice.

Making a generalization about the effects of technology-- iPhone use or social media use, for example-- requires making a generalization about people. Technology has brought us a host of tools that can be used for good or bad, in moderation or in excess. Hand two people a Netflix subscription and one may watch their favorite show for an hour before bed each night and the other may binge-watch to the detriment of his real-life relationships. Similarly, one person may use Facebook to maintain regular contact with friends and family while another may escape to the depths of their feeds until voyeurism replaces meaningful friendships.

I babysit a girl and a boy, in 5th and 3rd grade respectively. For them, the lure of their iPads is real, but fortunately their parents have instilled in them values of self-control by allotting specific amounts of time for internet use. When I see young families in a restaurant all glued to the screens of their smartphone, I blame not the smartphone but the family's lack of discretion to ban phone use at the dinner table. "Everything in moderation" is a bit of a cliche, but I think it applies when answering the three questions above.

Have we stopped living in the moment? Some of us probably have. The people who spend the duration of a concert viewing it through the screen they hold in front of them, for example. But others have learned to use their phones selectively to prolong a special moment, capturing the memory for future reminiscence. In my post about the UNC basketball victory over Duke this year, in which I respond to the question "did our phones ruin our victory over Duke?", I argue that my phone actually enhanced my memory of the win. Now whenever I want to relive that moment I can watch the video I took as I stormed my way from the Dean Dome to Franklin. And my ability to do that outweighs the slight distraction I might have felt by bringing my phone out for a few minutes

Is conversation dead? Not for some of us. For some of us, conversation is richer than ever, flourishing on more platforms than we've ever had access to before. A face-to-face dinner table conversation can be augmented by the countless new perspectives that are voiced on Twitter, forcing us to refine, and sometimes reevaluate, our own arguments. For others who choose to hide behind their screens and use digital communication as a substitute for in-person chats, conversation may be dying. Technology has the ability to shape, extend and challenge our conversations in new ways when we use it to supplement the conversations we have in real life.

Is social media making us sad? All the fuss about FOMO has led many critics to conclude that technology is creating a general sense of dissatisfaction among its users who are constantly exposed to the exciting, superior-seeming lives of their friends. Sometimes, this is true. Over Spring Break I had to make an active effort to avoid Instagram so I wouldn't compare my work-filled break with the tropical, booze-laden adventures of my friends. But that's a choice everyone is capable of making. It's not like social media is forcing us to wallow in our own envy. The happy people use social media to connect, share and grow. All of my cousins on my mom's side live in Texas, and I see them once a year during our annual family beach trip. Before social media, I had to wait a year to find out how they had changed and what new things they'd gotten involved in, but with Facebook I now feel closer to them than ever.

Humans have always (and will always) adapt to new technologies in different ways, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. A knife can be a cooking tool or a weapon, and just because some people use it to inflict harm doesn't mean we should discount all of its wonderful uses. The problem I find with people like Sherry Turkle is they place too much blame on the technology and not on the people using it. Technology is capable of being seductive, distracting and intrusive, but it can also be informative, reflective and empowering. It's every person's job to define the role of technology in his/her life in order to harness its benefits and minimize its potential harm.

There's an app for that

New apps pop up every day that purport to make our lives easier. Calendars, reminders, planners, and more help us keep our crazy lives organized. You also likely have an app for your bank, for your local weather, and an ESPN app to follow your favorite sports teams. Some of these apps have become so integral to my daily life that I honestly don't know what I would do without them (or how I even functioned before the iPhone). But I would argue that some apps that claim to make our lives easier really just add to the clutter, digitizing tasks that are better off done the old-fashioned way.

Below, I list a few apps that I couldn't live without, apps that have undoubtedly earned their permanent place on my iPhone home screen. Then I'll list some apps, old and new, that I find to be pretty frivolous and whose purpose is better served off of the screen.

Keep It:

1. Wells Fargo app

No idea what I would do without my Wells Fargo app. I use it every day, whether it be to check my account balance before I buy a Starbucks latte, or to deposit a check from babysitting, or to send off a bill payment for my apartment utilities. Just typing that out reminded me that I need to send off a bill payment.

2.  MapMyRun

This app will forever be my workout buddy. I have a short attention span when it comes to running, so I like to take impromptu routes when I go for a jog. This app uses GPS location data to chart out my route and calculate the distance, average pace and calories burned for a given run. A voice also gives you updates (over your music) when you hit certain mile markers. 

3.  Shazam 

Oh, how did I survive the days of playing "Name that Tune" with my brother and not being able to cheat with Shazam? Just kidding, I never cheat. But I use this app probably more often than most, pulling it out whenever I hear a song on the radio or at a bar that I like. The best part about Shazam is that it saves the tags of all the songs you shazam, so I go back later and download all the ones I liked.

4.  Scanner app

My scanner app (I used TinyScan until it started charging, and now I use Genius Scan) has been the unexpected frontrunner to make my list of most-valued apps. It's perfect for scanning and sending off forms, which I've been doing a lot of as I prepare for studying abroad this summer. You just snap a picture of the document and the app resizes, reformats and enhances it for you, spitting out a ready-to-email .pdf doc.

5.  Dropbox

This is probably on most people's essential repertoire, but Dropbox has replaced the old "email-it-to-yourself" technique and allowed me to access important documents at home and on my desktops at work or in class.



Ditch It:

1. Meditation apps

 Mediation apps were the cool new thing of 2013. Calm, Headspace and Mindfulness are a few popular ones that, as one Huffington Post article put it, can bring you "Inner Peace On the Go." But I find something inherently contradictory about meditating with my handheld. The reason meditation is popular right now is because it offers a space for silence and solitude in the cluttered, digital overload that is our everyday lives. Using your iPhone to facilitate that kind of escape just defeats the purpose.

2. Tinder

Nothing good comes out of Tinder, unless maybe you use it for pure entertainment. Tinder is an invitation for young people who lack the confidence or social skills to date normally to flirt casually on their phones with similar people in their area and judge each other solely by physical appearances. Tinder prides itself on its number of "matches," but I'd like some data on how many of those matches lead to long-term relationships.

3. 30/30

I heard about this app in Mashable's recent article, "9 Super Simple Apps That Will Make Your Life Easier." It's basically a fancy timer that organizes your tasks into 30-minute chunks, allowing you to focus completely on one task at a time for just 30 minutes. I, for one, think this app would make accomplishing my daily tasks a lot harder. Not only do the things I need to accomplish rarely boil down to 30-minute intervals, but I'd be too distracted by my dwindling time allotment to actually focus.

4. Cloak

This "anti-social" app I wrote about in my last post is totally unnecessary, and I seriously doubt it will ever catch on. To recap, it lets you track your friends using location data and helps you avoid them by notifying you if you get within a certain radius of them. Its founders think anti-social apps are soon to be on the rise, but I don't. I'd only put active effort into seeing people I want to see, not into avoiding the possible awkward run-in with people I don't.

5. My Fitness Pal

Okay, I know a lot of people use this app and find it really helpful. You basically use it to set fitness and weight loss goals, and then type in every piece of food you consume and every minute of physical activity you perform, and it keeps you on track for achieving your goals. A friend and I gave this app a try one time when we decided we wanted to lose 5 pounds for Spring Break. I lasted all of 24 hours before I grew extremely irritated with having to type in the exact amount and brand of everything I was eating (Who knows how much a "cup" of Cheetos is?). I prefer good, old-fashioned self control.


So there's my list of must-haves and need-nots. What's yours?

 

The anti-social network is not the answer

Social media has always been a way for us to connect with friends. Twitter gives us live updates of their activities, Instagram shows us photos of where they've been, and Foursquare allows them to virtually check in to nearby locations. But what if there was an app designed for the exact opposite purpose - to help us avoid our friends?

mashable.com

The new app Cloak does just that. Created by Buzzfeed's former creative director Chris Baker and programmer Brian Moore, Cloak teams up with other popular apps that use location data to help you be more anti-social. Cloak creates a map of all your nearby friends' whereabouts, allowing you to 'flag' particular friends you don't want to see. Then, if you get too close (the default distance is half a mile), Cloak will warn you to stay away. So far, Cloak uses location data from Instagram and Foursquare but has plans to try to expand in the future.

In an email to the Washington Post, Baker said: “I think we’ve seen the crest of the big social network … I think anti-social stuff is on the rise. You’ll be seeing more and more of these types of projects.”

I think there is some truth to what Baker is saying, but I think apps like Cloak take it a little too far. I do think we've already seen the crest of the big social network. I also think people are starting to resent the state of constant connectedness that has defined my generation post-Facebook. With this resentment we're starting to see a kind of backlash. Exclusive restaurants and bars have started instituting 'no phone' policies. Companies are calling for 'no phone days' to alleviate employees' constant attachment to technology. And perhaps most interesting, studies show that millennials are in general dissatisfied with the pervasive role technology plays in their lives.

But here's where I think Baker and apps like Cloak have got it wrong. The days of the social network as we know it may be numbered, but what people yearn for is not an anti-social network. It's a network of fewer, but deeper and more authentic connections. By banning cell phones at nightclubs, management is forcing patrons to interact the old fashioned way, forming connections through genuine, face-to-face interaction.

Our tech-weary generation doesn't want to use our phones to stay less connected, we just want to connect to friends in more meaningful ways. And apps like Cloak aren't the answer. 

Still tweeting in Turkey

neurope.eu

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan learned a lesson this weekend about the power of social media when his attempt to shut down Twitter backfired. Erdogan was trying to curb the proliferation of tweets from Turkish citizens that linked to incriminating material pointing to government corruption.Turkey is a top-10 country in number of active Twitter users, and the website has been integral in organizing protests and demonstrations in the past. 

But just hours after Erdogan followed through on his threat to "rip the roots out" from Twitter, skilled hackers had already found a way to circumvent the ban, tweeting out instructions for others to regain access to the website. Hours after Twitter was shut down, the hashtag #TwitterisblockedinTurkey was trending worldwide. The prime minister's attempt to exert government superiority only revealed the power of the masses and social media.

Another apparent triumph for social media occurred recently in Ukraine, as citizens ignored government intimidation such as text messages that said, "Dear user, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance" and continued to support the overthrow of Ukraine's authoritarian government on Twitter.

Journalism has long acted as a watchdog on government, but now social media provides everyday citizens the opportunity to be watchdogs. One government misstep can become widespread news at the hands of social media users. For authoritarian governments attempting to filter their citizens' access to information, Twitter is their worst nightmare. It is totally free from government control and capable of instantly unifying the masses around a cause.

 As a writer for the Wall Street Journal puts it, "every leader—from Putin to Obama—now has to contend with the instant awareness of his actions." Twitter makes government leaders accountable and forces them to pay attention to the things their citizens are saying. As Erdogan learned, trying to stifle online dissent only strengthens the dissenters, to whom Twitter is an important outlet to express their beliefs.

Turkey, who is currently trying to join the European Union, just sent the world a very discouraging message about its commitment to democratic ideals. Open access to information and the freedom to express beliefs are key components of democracy that are furthered by platforms like Twitter. Try to take this away from people, and they'll just tweet louder.

Science does not explain binge-watching

Today I stumbled across a tweet from my favorite news source, The Week, that caught my attention. "We're hard-wired to binge watch. The science behind our Netflix addictions," it read. It was an interesting enough claim to click. But as much as I (usually) love The Week, this article was way off.

The article is called, "The science behind our insatiable need to binge-watch TV: It turns out we're wired to watch episode after episode after episode." The author claims to have discovered a scientific explanation for binge-watching. But the "scientific evidence" (which ranges from psychological to anthropological in nature) doesn't really explain our Netflix addiction at all. Here are a few of the article's explanations and why I don't like them:

1. Empathy

Apparently the human ability to feel "empathy," a term coined at the turn of the 20th century but that has been around since the beginning of time, explains binge-watching. I don't deny that empathy helps us feel more emotionally connected to the characters we watch, but that's not a new phenomenon. Empathy made me feel attached to all of my favorite childhood TV characters, too. And if anything, having to wait a week until the next airing of my favorite show made me even more attached to them, left wondering what they would do next. Now that Netflix has given us access to full seasons, we can come and go as we please, which I would argue could make us less invested in characters.

2. "Neurocinematics"

A term coined by a Princeton psychologist that deals with how our brain responds to videos. His findings are pretty obvious... the more clear-cut the emotions conveyed are in the clip, or the stronger the action, the more people's brains react in the same way. Basically, a scene of a bunch of people getting their heads chopped off elicits a more similar response from viewers than a scene of the afternoon activity at a Manhattan park. Duh? The article also never really ties "neurocinematics" to binge-watching, which is a content-neutral phenomenon.

3. People like it.

"In a survey commissioned by Netflix, 61 percent of 1,500 online respondents claimed to binge-watch Netflix regularly, and three-quarters reported having positive feelings in doing this." 

Okay, so you've told us that people are doing it and that they like it. Not exactly groundbreaking, especially coming from Netflix itself.

It kind of seems like The Week is grasping for straws here. In reality, there is a much more simple explanation. Science doesn't make us prone to binge-watching; society does. Binge-watching is an escape from all the clutter and the stress we experience on a daily basis. Just like how people went to the movie theater to escape their busy jobs, people now just hop into bed and marry their laptops to find solace. Only today we have a whole lot more to escape, so we're practicing more extreme forms of escaping.

Another much more plausible explanation is basic economics. Netflix wants us to binge-watch. There's a reason they release full seasons at once. They want us to get hooked and leave us feeling like how I felt when I annihilated Season 2 of House of Cards in one day: Empty. And what better way to fill the hole inside us than with more Netflix? Seems pretty convenient for Netflix's revenue stream.

Binge-watching isn't something we're hardwired to do. It's a learned behavior we developed after Netflix suddenly handed us instant access to full seasons of our favorite shows. We learn all kinds of behavior in response to new tools. We weren't hardwired to think in 140 characters-- Jack Dorsey founded Twitter and we learned to communicate in shorter language. Then the news media caught on and started feeding us small bits of content to appease our shortening attention spans. Then Buzzfeed started making lists to organize the clutter of bits into a format we could digest. Our behavior is constantly adapting to new technologies, and new technologies are constantly giving us new ways to practice this behavior.

The problem with the scientific explanation for binge-watching is that it's science that's been around for forever. We've always been hardwired to feel empathy and react certain way to stimuli, but binge-watching is a relatively new phenomenon. That's why I argue our helpless Netflix addictions are much more simple: We were all suffering from digital-induced information overload and a poor economy, and Netflix seized the opportunity to provide us with an escape.

Does Facebook screening by employers lead to workplace discrimination?

We're constantly told to beware of how we portray ourselves online. Social media is now a commonplace recruiting tool for employers, and one bad tweet or tagged photo from years ago could jeopardize your chances with a company. Several of my friends have gone so far as to change their Facebook names to a nickname or delete their accounts entirely to avoid scrutiny by potential employers.

The importance of monitoring our online presence is something we're all pretty much aware of. But a more interesting question: Is it fair that employers are using social media to screen candidates? Are they really ending up with better, more qualified employees by weeding out people based on their profiles?

Federal employment laws prohibit employers from discriminating from hiring people based on age, family medical history, religion or pregnancy status. However, a quick scan of a Facebook profile can often reveal several of those factors, depending on the person's privacy settings. Moreover, older people are less inclined to use computers, so screening based on social media presence could put these people at a disadvantage. Some of these issues were raised at an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission meeting last week.

Most of the hearing dealt with hiring practices and how employers use social media to screen candidates. The problem I find is that's difficult to monitor. Most sites don't allow users to track who has viewed their profile, except LinkedIn, which is inherently much more professional than personal. If an employer visited a candidate's Facebook page and saw that he/she was Muslim, or if a company like Chick-fil-A founded on Christian values saw that a potential new employee was gay and did not call him/her for an interview, how could the employer's bias be proven or disproven? It'd be pretty tough.

But aside from the risk of discrimination, employers may have another incentive to adopt strict guidelines for social media screening. A new study reveals that candidates who know they have been screened for professionalism on social media adopt a more negative perception of the company. This finding is consistent with rising concerns over invasion of privacy online. The most qualified candidates likely will choose between several job offers, so hearing that they've been snooped on may sway their decision and backfire on the company.

A few days ago, I got a friend request from a public relations company on Facebook and was very taken aback. My Facebook privacy settings are as private as they go, so I knew the company couldn't view any of my photos or personal information, but I found myself in a dilemma.... Do I accept the request and allow the firm to see everything (some of which they might deem unfit for their company culture) or do I deny it, which might seem offensive or suspicious and also jeopardize my prospects?

These are sticky questions that don't have a clear-cut answer. The landscape for job recruiting is constantly shifting because of social media and federal regulations haven't yet caught up. It will be interesting to see how the EEOC handles some of these issues about social media screening and how employers respond. But for now, it's better to play it safe by keeping a clean social media profile and letting our skills win us the job.

Calling for an online Bill of Rights

A few weeks ago, I posted about the war over net neutrality and likened it to the American Revolution and a struggle over freedom and equality. Now, Tim Berners-Lee, the founding father of the internet, is calling for an online Bill of Rights. He says a document is needed to govern the internet and protect people from governmental and corporate abuse.

Today's internet certainly isn't what Berners-Lee had in mind when he drafted a proposal 25 years ago for what would eventually become the World Wide Web. The web was designed as an open space with a level playing field, free of ties to greed and power. But today, the internet is increasingly regarded with an air of cynicism and distrust as the curtain is slowly lifted on hoards of personal data and breaches of privacy. Much like when English subjects imposed the Magna Carta upon the King of England, Berners-Lee calls for global collaboration to draft a document that protects everyday folks' online rights.

A very compelling point he makes is that the free and open flow of information is essential to democracy. If we have to constantly worry about "what's happening at the back door" and what kind of information the government is holding, we lose trust in the entire system. And it has ramifications for much more than just government. Without a free and open internet, we erect barriers that prevent understanding and connectedness among different nations and cultures.

An internet that affords some people more access than others is a notion many of us quickly dismiss as unimportant or irrelevant. Maybe that's because the idea of "data" is so abstract. Most of the time the tiny bits of information floating around cyberspace don't produce any immediate impact, and it's easy to play out-of-sight-out-of-mind. If people were hoarding our money, or if leaders were wrongly detaining us, we'd notice. Those are tangible and egregious violations of our freedoms. But what Berners-Lee is trying to suggest is that an internet controlled by power structures may be just as dangerous, and just as contradictory to democratic ideals.

One challenge Berners-Lee notes is that the document must be global, not confined to any particular border, culture or government system. After all, the internet is a system for everyone. It's a place where anyone can speak freely, where anyone can create content, and where anyone can establish an online presence. Drafting a Bill of Rights would be a major step toward ensuring the free and open World Wide Web Berners-Lee had in mind.

What do you think? If you had to write a global, online Bill of Rights, what rights would you include?

techcrunch.com

Spring Break FOMO

I've become acutely aware over the past few days that social media is the root of all FOMO. It's UNC's Spring Break, and while most of my friends are sipping on pina coladas dangling their toes into crystal pools surrounded by waiters carrying more pina coladas, I'm staying in Chapel Hill and working. I don't mean to sound like a total ingrate; I love Chapel Hill and am very happy to be saving money for what will be an incredible summer. But every time I log onto Facebook or check my Instagram feed I'm bombarded with enough images of tropical paradise to make even the least FOMO-prone person crumble.

It's also just about impossible to escape. After vowing to avoid Instagram, I logged onto Facebook to reply to a message from a friend only to see that it ended with the signature "Sent from Cancun, Mexico." Snapchat isn't safe either. I'm hesitant to tap on each pending snap because I know it will probably reveal my bikini-clad friends splashing around the water in feigned candidness. Okay, maybe I'm just bitter...

But all of this got me thinking.

FOMO has been around forever, long before the advent of social media. When I was a kid, I used to come home from school and whine to my parents about things the other kids had at school that I didn't ("But Mom, everyone else eats Lunchables!"). Oh, the envy of those pre-packaged pepperonis and cold tomato sauce....

I was also practically the last person on earth to get a smartphone, thanks to my parents' misguided assumption that it was excessive to have a phone with internet capabilities. I was a college freshman unable to check email or Facebook from my handheld, and I'd developed such a chronic case of FOMO that my parents finally took pity on me.

It's kind of like a modern-day "Keeping up with the Joneses." Before, we developed FOMO when we interacted with people and became aware of the things they had or the things they talked about doing. Now, all we have to do is pull out our smartphones for live, instant updates on all of our friends' awesomeness.

So is all of this healthy? How much extra time, money and effort do we put into keeping up with our friends now that social media has basically created a cesspool of FOMO? I know I'm guilty of going out way too often because I think about how good a time all my friends will have without me if I stay in. Sometimes it's worth it, but many times I realize the outing wasn't much different than all the others, and I could've benefited from saving the money and binging on Netflix.

But I also think FOMO can be a good thing. A few weeks ago I saw Instagram posts of my friends enjoying a Carolina baseball game on a sunny Chapel Hill day, and I was reminded how much I enjoy baseball games and that I need to go to them more often. A few days ago, my friend posted a picture of a delicious-looking Starbucks concoction ordered off the "secret menu" that gave me inspiration for my next coffee run.

The fact is, being able to constantly know what everybody else is up to has its perks and its obvious downsides. In situations like my current one, it's very easy to compare my Spring Break to everyone else's and feel like I'm seriously missing out. But the tradeoff is that I get to save money for traveling abroad this summer. I think the best way to approach FOMO is to realize that we can't all do everything all the time. There will always be someone doing something cooler than you and posting about it. But the next week, maybe you'll be basking in the sun in Hawaii while they're crammed into a cubicle. Instead of scrolling through your feeds and feeling like you're missing out, just remember that your time is coming.

Crowdfund my chances at true love!

Raising money for that weird project idea you've always had is easier than ever before. Thanks to the rise of crowdfunding, there are ample platforms that can connect you to other like-minded people willing to throw out a few bucks. Sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have made a name for themselves by turning people's dreams into reality with a just little help from the internet.

A few of my friends opened up a brewery in Carrboro called Steel String last year and used Indiegogo to help fund the design and construction of an outdoor patio. In just a few short months, they raised almost $6,000 from friends and local residents. Two students who participated in Semester at Sea last year (the program I'm thrilled to be a part of this summer) raised the entire cost of tuition through crowdfunding and coming up with creative, travel-related prizes for their top donors.

I'm all about people reaching their goals, and sites like these allow great ideas to grow. But one of the latest campaigns to hit crowdfunding has me raising an eyebrow. The Dating Ring, a matchmaking start-up that began in New York, has started a Crowdtilt campaign to fly single women from male-scarce New York to male-abundant San Francisco. The company's overall goal is to reach $50,000, but it needs at least $10,000 to go through with the project. It would then fly "carefully selected" eligible bachelorettes to San Francisco over Memorial Day to meet their chosen hunks. The campaign video (which you can watch below) talks a lot about the "ratios" and "numbers" that have reduced women's dating lives in New York to such meager existences. The women featured say they wouldn't hesitate to fly across the country for love, and they plead people to support the Crowdtilt project. Dating Ring CEO Lauren Kay says the idea is one she'd been joking about with her friends for a while until she decided to try to make it a reality. 




Seems like a harmless experiment, right? Take a bunch of single, male-deprived city girls and drop them in a valley of technology and too much libido and see who falls in love? But here's my problem with it: The campaign makes two poor assumptions that I kind of thought we were past at this point.

1. That women are moveable objects that will be totally uprooted from their lives and careers in pursuit of their dream guy.
2. That women always date men and men always date women. The "ratios" being lamented in each city only apply to the heterosexual dating world. I bet you don't see all the gay men in San Francisco losing a wink of sleep over it.

I can't help but think the women in the video come off a little pathetic as they bemoan their circumstances and fantasize about the opportunity to fly across the country for love. Kind of like when I cringe during every season finale of The Bachelor when the final female contestant doesn't even blink at the thought of dropping everything and starting a new life wherever her man chooses (but don't get me wrong, I'm still wildly and unashamedly entertained by The Bachelor).

Kay says the only reason they're planning to ship the women cross-country first is because of all the winter weather in New York, and she plans to organize another trip for the men to travel east later. Okay, maybe that makes it a little more fair, but the whole thing still feels like a reversion to traditional dating dynamics.

Kay says over 100 people have contributed already, but the numbers are showing up lower due to a Crowdtilt bug. I guess if it reaches its goal then enough people think it's a better idea than I do, but I can't say I'll be helping tilt this project to fruition.

A phone call a day keeps the doctor away

Today I found a renewed appreciation for something very simple: A phone call. I was sitting on the couch at my parents' house trying to simultaneously write a paper, browse Twitter and watch the Carolina basketball game on TV when my phone rang. It was my close friend and old next door neighbor who I hadn't heard from in a long time. I went outside and we talked for about 20 minutes, mainly catching up on each other's lives. It wasn't until after I resumed my position on the couch that I realized how long it had been since I'd had a real phone conversation. Sure, I call people all the time to make plans or ask a quick question, but not to really talk. Most of my catching up on friends' lives occurs in the form of texts, Facebook chats or casual stalking on social media. I found myself feeling strangely happy after the phone call, which got me thinking.

It's becoming more and more rare in today's communication to actually hear someone's voice. There are so many easier, but much more passive, ways to stay connected online. We can visit our friends' Facebook pages and instantly get a pretty good idea of what they've been up to, or we can go to our Twitter feeds and see what people are doing in real time. But that is so much less satisfying. New social media tools that purport to make us more connected are popping up left and right, so it seems like we should be closer and more connected to our friends than ever before. But the effect has been a bit more counterintuitive, and studies have shown that superconnectedness is actually contributing to loneliness. The more we build our social webs online, the less we're having meaningful interactions IRL, which are much more rewarding. People also tend to post about the most glamorous and exciting aspects of their lives, rendering the people we're so "connected" to on social media idealized depictions of themselves. Real life is always going to be messier than the lives we choose to put on display, and sorting through the messy stuff requires real, meaningful conversations with people we care about. I'm so constantly bombarded by posts and pins and status updates that I get this false sense of fulfillment, and forget that nothing replaces hearing someone's voice.