Icebreaker activities are the worst part of starting a new school year. Sharing fun facts in front of the class makes me want to run out of the building. The only way I bear these activities is by having friends in class with me. So when my parents told third grade me we were moving to Northbrook, I knew that year would be the worst.

The bell rang as I filled in my sunshine-yellow handout with answers that my teacher would later put up on the board.

Favorite color? Easy. Blue.

Favorite movie? “Spy Kids.” Duh. 

Three best friends? My blue crayon hesitated over the blank space, not sure what to write.

A voice in my head whispered, “I have no friends.” 

Fast forward to junior year of high school, when I’m starting to hear other students say the same phrase. Both the quiet girl in the back of math class and the senior who has over 1,000 Instagram followers can be heard saying, “I have no friends.”

As teens who seem to spend more time talking online than in person, it’s easy to feel like we don’t have real friends or sometimes any friends at all. Social media has helped us connect with many more people than we would be able to in person. But does snapping someone a picture of your bedroom ceiling really constitute a friendship? 

The internet has blurred the line between friendship and connection. It’s much easier to instantly chat online than forge deep, long-term relationships. Even if we know many people, we lack close bonds with most of them, resulting in that nagging, almost catastrophic idea that we have “no friends.” 

The truth is that strong friendships require continual effort.We need to concentrate on what we want from relationships before forming connections that merely increase the number of people we know.

After all, if our generation is so good at communicating online, we can get better at forming lasting relationships.

If I could offer third grade me some advice, I’d tell her she won’t be alone forever. But she has to put in the work to get there.

Oh, and that icebreakers will always be awkward, no matter how many real friends you have.