I’m not super active on my school’s fb group…its a pretty large school (a UC). I don’t know anyone going there and haven’t really met people online like some of my hs friends have. I was wondering if this would be detrimental. I just didn’t see the point in making friends online and then never meeting them in real life or meeting them and finding out that we didn’t get along as well as we did online if that makes sense. HOWEVER, all my hs friends are talking about all the people from their colleges they are chatting with on fb and that’s making me worried that perhaps I’m missing out on something. Does anyone have experience with this? ie did your college’s fb group actually help you make friends going into college? Does it make a difference?
No, the vast majority of students ignore the facebook page.
Most people do not keep the “friends” they made on the fb group. At most schools, being “facebook famous” before you get there turns into a bit of an embarrassment.
All of my Facebook friends from college, I met in real life first.
It’s fine to meet other UC students via the Facebook group, but as always, be wary of accepting friend requests from people you do not know personally, even if they are in a closed UC group, for example.
I actually kept many of the FB friends from the FB group, although my closest friends ended up being people whose names I had never even heard until we moved in there. I was known as the FB/group chat guy when I first moved in and I never found it embarrassing. But OP, from personal experience, most of your college best friends will be people you don’t even know right now.
Also attending a big state school- I didn’t meet any friends through the fb group. The group will always be the most active before college starts, but once people actually make real life friends in dorms, classes, clubs, etc. the activity will die down and no one will care about the group. I think there was ONE person that I talked to on facebook first and became friends with him later on, but the funny thing was that our real life meeting was completely by chance through mutual friends.
Basically even if you do talk with people in the fb group, chances are that even if you do meet and become friends, it will probably be because of other reasons, not facebook.
My daughter’s experiences wth the FB group were
- When she got to orientation she recognized some people so that made it easier to go say hi.
Even if you don’t end up being friends with them you meet others through them. - People are more bold online than in real life…so if you see everyone talkign about partying they are just trying to be cool
- There will be some wacko person that stirs up drama
I don’t think you need to worry about missing out on anything. Though checking it once in a while, might be helpful in case some useful information pops up (a reminder of an important deadline for example).
There were two people I met through my FB group who I thought were going to be some of my closest friends. Now, going into senior year, one of them is an acquaintance and the other I don’t like very much at all.
I don’t think I made any friends from the class Facebook group. Of course every once in a while I’d meet someone and recognize them from a post or something, but I didn’t make any good friends through the group or anything.