Fifty. That was how many days worth of 10-second photos we’d sent back in forth to each other over Snapchat, most of where our relationship stayed.
It started off unlike any relationship I’ve had before. Not by meeting him through another friend and not even by meeting him while out at a party. It took one swipe right and we “met” from one app: Tinder. The app was exactly what my friends and I turned to after wanting to stay in one night before break.
Connor* looked familiar, and his Tinder bio was intriguing enough, so I thought to chat him. After talking through the app, I got his Snapchat. For the next three weeks, this was our only form of communication. We connected almost instantly. He somehow knew the right thing to say to make me laugh. There was one catch, though: we hadn’t met in person.
Social media plays such a large role in our everyday lives. Posting an Instagram picture to show off our fun night with friends must be shared online. Our “phones eats first,” and we post Snapchat stories to see if that one person on your mind has viewed it or not. These behaviors all add up to this obsessive lifestyle that we are drawn into. It was hard to explain to my parents that I wanted to hang out with some guy I hadn’t even met yet. How would I tell them that we’ve only been communicating over Snapchat?
My stomach whirled at the thought of actually being able to talk to Connor in real life, opposed to only knowing him through a name of my iPhone screen. It seemed crazy that we hadn’t spent time together, but it seemed like I knew him already. A Snapchat streak that lasted a few weeks felt like I knew him.
As I sat at dinner, I listened to my dad talk about why Tinder was stupid. It made sense to me the more I thought about it. It’s only based off of looks and these images on the profile and nothing else. Without hesitation, I deleted the app. Good-bye boys judging me off my body, my looks, this image of me.
I still continued talking to Connor although I had removed my online profile. By New Years Eve, I got his number and we texted almost non-stop. We introduced each other almost sarcastically over text, because at this point we still hadn’t met in person. We planned how the next day we would meet up for the first time and see a movie on New Year’s Day. It felt hopeful. That night was our “date” to the movies. Yes, in quotation marks because we never defined what we had. To me, it seemed like one.
I waited anxiously to meet him. I tried to distract myself with my Instagram feed and by texting my friends. When I first saw Connor, we immediately began talking. But this time it wasn’t over 10 second pictures with captions and it wasn’t even a text with his name on a screen, it was real life. Though it was awkward at first knowing so much about each other just through social media, we sat down and talked to the point that time escaped us.
The first time I actually felt the connection we shared over social media was when we held hands that night. It made my mind wander from the screen and actors in front of me, and think of the space between us. We hung out a few more times over break, but time with him always went by too fast.
When almost every hour is spent talking to the same person, it feels like every moment is shared with them. Social media helps add to this constant connection. The Instagram posts and Snapchat pictures make it instantly possible to stay in touch so that there is almost no personal space and no longing for each other.
When he complimented me over a Snapchat, I would glow and feel warm. When we held hands only a week later, I felt the same feeling. But nearly seven weeks later when he stopped responding over social media or via texting, I knew that this wasn’t a what a relationship was. This was a lost connection.
That hopeless feeling when you want to contact one person, but you have no service. That feeling when you’re on one end of the line but no one else is on the other end, so you listen to it ring after ring and feel forgotten. This is what is was like the moment I knew I liked him, but knew I shouldn’t have.
Within less than two months time, we had began and ended our relationship the same way: social media. I knew it was over when our Snapchat streak ended, the same way our relationship had begun. How is it that a relationship is confined by a number displayed next to a name on our phones? It’s so easy to get hung up on Instagram likes, keeping Snapchat streaks, checking Twitter to keep up with the latest happenings, or texting as our only way of talking to one another.
I wish someone else I knew had also experienced this lost connection, or rather a relationship that blossomed from social media. It’s hard to explain the obsessiveness that social media brings to someone who doesn’t see the need for it. I realized that this type of relationship was something only younger generations would experience. The constant need to Snapchat or text a person creates an invasion of personal space, because we’re always connected to one another even though it’s not always face-to-face. There’s no space between us, no void to fill, no longing, just these online connections.
One time in a movie theater we held hands, and one time in a musty parking garage our lips met for the first time, but the time before that, before all of this human connection, it started with an app called Tinder and a Snapchat with his name on a screen.
*Name has been changed.