Love at first 'like': freshers never get a clean slate

By Tamara Obradovic, First Year Psychology

Social media means freshers do not get to start anew at university - and that does not matter.

Supposedly, it only takes a tenth of a second to form a first impression, a tenth of a second determine whether someone appears worthy of future attention and company.

People herald first impressions as moments so monumental and final that the actual lifespan of a first impression seems impossibly insignificant. Yet, the minute size of an initial judgement does little to alleviate the fear surrounding a first impression. Ultimately, despite the undeniable pressures and apparent shallowness of forming opinions on strangers, the idea of a first impression seems so perfectly unblemished and optimistic that people continue to rely on them heavily.

Opportunities for first impressions arise daily, but I encountered the most intense bombardment of new faces during Freshers’ Week.

In the weeks before arriving in Bristol, the prospect of leaving behind the refuge of my parents, old friends and reputation excited me and frightened me equally, but I always breathed a little easier whenever I reminded myself of the opportunity to introduce myself in the way I wanted- a way untarnished and undetermined by familial ties, social obligations and cliques.

Unfortunately, forming a genuine first impression is an impossible feat in today’s digital world.

With Facebook groups, Instagram and Whatsapp, many of us first years naively thought we could give our friendships and social lives a head start by sending friend requests, following each other on instagram and starting group chats with our future peers. Many of us, blinded by the mounting anxieties of finding a place, found ourselves herded into the trap of clicking “join group” or “follow” in the hopes of establishing a safety net when we finally made the transition to university. Many of us failed to realise that, in cheapening the quality of our first encounters with each other, we dirtied the promised purity of a fresh start.

Whether we like to admit it or not, social media plays a huge role in creating reputations and opinions - no one can claim they never rolled our eyes at a status or raised our eyebrows at a photo. Whether using a perfectly colour coordinated instagram feed, embarassing tagged facebook photos from year 7, or pictures of pets to serve as a poor substitute for getting to know someone in real life, we rely too heavily on social media to form opinions of people.

When myself and other first years decided to “get to know” each other on social media, we exposed ourselves to the temptation of judging complete strangers and subsequently gave others the opportunity to make uninformed opinions based on our online profiles. So when move-in day arrived, the sad remains of our cherished fresh starts were merely occasions to confirm our online representations.

First impressions possess such raw hopefulness and yet we belittled ours with so little thought.

But perhaps social media does not destroy first impressions. Perhaps people idolise first impressions too much. Perhaps first impressions themselves do not serve as worthy means of forming opinions of new people. After all, a first impression lasts such an insignificant amount of time that it seems wrong to accept a split second evaluation as an accurate understanding of a person.

I refuse to accept that a stranger can completely understand me and my individual complexities in one tenth of a second and I certainly do not consider myself capable of forming a halfway accurate insight in less than a second, or after a glance at a social media profile. I truly hope someone did not reject me on account of my poor instagram photo editing skills or because of my unflattering hair on move-in day, and I would hate to think I disregarded potential friends because of some menial detail which happened to dominate a split second judgement.

People give first impressions, whether online or in person, too much glory. I look forward to the next three years of establishing ourselves beyond our social media.

Featured image: Unsplash/Jakob Owens

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