Where else than in a Finnish university can you really feel the necessity to use your smartphone 24 hours a day, react to Facebook messages immediately (that became the fastest way to communicate) and join tens of groups for various purposes? Purpose of studying, purpose of living, purpose of everything?
When I studied in Belgium (in Louvain-la-Neuve) I used Facebook for slow communication. Mostly we just called to each other or wrote text messages. But it was in 2012, did we progress so fast with communication tools that they became an essential part of our lives? But another thing is that Finns are being recognized as a really high-technology society. And Finns created a great use of Facebook in student life – more than in any other European country I know of. Here the university takes a big part in communicating with students via Facebook too.
One day I’ve seen two girls sitting in front of each other and chatting in the train with each other via FB messages. They didn’t speak with each other but only looked at each other and smiled (and that’s also good because they didn’t bother other passengers with their loud talking).
In Finland now it’s not possible anymore to know about all the social events if you’re not using Facebook. Your friends know about your life from your posts, although they are your neighbors but you don’t meet every day, and a collective gathering for a barbecue or celebrating a birthday would involve invitations and chatting via FB.
I personally don’t spend much time on Facebook, for its news-feed can take you away from your initial wish to search for some information there – and you forgot, oh yes, you wanted to visit your group. And these groups are topical for Lappeenranta:
Newcomers’ Group (every year new)
Place of living groups: Students of Punkkerikatu and Ruskolahdenkatu
