Because of the spread of coronavirus, we took all classes online last year and spring term of this year. Especially last year, I was in trouble because I could not make friends. Then, I used social media, Twitter and mainly Instagram to collect information and connect students in this university. From this experience, I found both merit and demerit.

One of the merits is to meet a wide variety type of friends. In face-to-face classes, we are likely to make friends with people who have similar personality to us. However, through social media, we can involve with people without bias from their looks, voice and attitudes. Therefore, using social media enables us to connect new types of friends and to broaden our world view. In fact, one of my friends firstly met on Instagram has the opposite characteristic to me, but I enjoy myself when talking with her.

On the other hand, the demerit is high risk because the amount of information to judge whether the account is genuine is only a few. Actually, some of my friends received the messages to solicitate fraud or investment from the accounts which pretend to students in Aoyama Gakuin University. Thus, we should pay deep attention when we interact with unknown people on social media.