Social media a mixed blessing for class reunions
Social media has been helpful in setting up class reunions, such as this one for the Laurel Highlands High School Class of 1972.
Alexandra Bennett, a 2020 graduate of South Fayette High School, says she remains in touch with high school classmates through social media.
For many Facebook users, the class reunion never ends.
High school pals who would have otherwise slipped into oblivion are again part of our daily lives. We see photos of their kids or grandkids. They clue us in on their vacations, job frustrations, marriages, split-ups, political views, religious affiliations, hobbies, triumphs and tragedies. Where we once would have needed to wait every 10 years or so to find out what the classmates we grew up with are up to, it’s now as easy as going to a social media feed or, for those whose curiosity extends beyond Facebook, undertaking a Google search.
But in this season of class reunions, it’s worth wondering if Facebook and its social media brethren have made class reunions much less urgent. Do out-of-towners need the hassle of gassing up the car or purchasing increasingly more expensive plane tickets in order to find out if the classmate Adonis has gone to flab or the onetime ugly duckling has become a swan? Has social media leeched away the mysteries and surprises of class reunions?
There’s a school of thought that says, yes, it has. A New York Times article in 2011 wondered if the high school reunion was “past its prime,” and in her 2011 book, “100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet,” New York Times columnist Pamela Paul zeroes in on class reunions as one of the things that has been lost, along with handwritten letters, dittos, maps and TV Guide.
At a class reunion “there is little to discover or pretend to discover, even as you go through the awkward tango of asking someone you haven’t spoken to in 25 years what they’re up to these days. You know perfectly well they have two teenage kids, a labradoodle, and a gracious split-level home in Ronkonkoma.”
Paul continued, “Will future generations even bother with the IRL (in real life) reunion every five years? Kids drag all their elementary school and high school friends along with them to college whether they want to or not. You can’t leave your yearbook and your old high school acquaintances unattended in your mom’s basement the way you used to. Your yearbook is everywhere.”
But Cyndi Clamp, the St. Louis-based president of the National Association Reunion Managers, insists that the impact social media has had on class reunions has evolved over the last decade or so. In the early part of the 2010s, Clamp said that, yes, there had been a dip in interest in class reunions caused by social media. Since then, though, class reunions have actually gotten a boost from social media. Clamp pointed out that Facebook has become a valuable tool in tracking down classmates who would have otherwise had to have been found by thumbing through the White Pages.
Ten years ago, “the curiosity factor was gone, because people could look on Facebook and see what all their classmates were doing,” Clamp explained. All of this made attending a reunion “seem not quite as important to go to.”
Now, Clamp believes that people who say they are skipping a class reunion because they get all the information they need about their classmates online probably wouldn’t have been inclined to attend in the first place.
Earlier this month, Canon-McMillan High School’s class of 1983 held its 40-year reunion at the Hilton Garden Inn at Southpointe, and Helen Navrotski, who is leading efforts to organize the get-together, said she wasn’t told by any classmates that were begging off because they’ve gotten their fill of high school nostalgia online.
Over the last four decades “most everybody has stayed in touch,” Navrotski said. About 100 of the 400 members of the class have responded to an invitation to attend, which is close to the 25% average response rate for high school reunions across the country.
Many organizers like Navrotski say their job has also become easier after they have set up pages on Facebook announcing reunions and urging classmates to get in touch.
“Classmates are easier to locate and update on the reunion,” said Jill Molton, who is one of the organizers of reunion of the Class of 1972 at Laurel Highlands High School in Uniontown. “Usually, if you’re not ‘friends’ with someone on Facebook, chances are you know someone who is to get the word out. We’ve been able to find classmates for our 50th reunion who we’ve lost track of over the last 50 years.”
Molton added, “And with people interacting more, they find out who is going and sometimes plan in advance who they’ll sit with.”
Of course, one question hanging over class reunions is how a generation born after 2000 and marinated in social media will approach reunions with old classmates when that time comes.
Alexandra Bennett, a 2020 graduate of South Fayette High School explained that “I am not sure what a high school reunion would look like. I know that a lot of the people I went to high school with have vocalized that they have little interest in attending (a reunion) but that may change as the years pass.”
Bennett also said, “I know that when it comes to me specifically, I am connected, if not more so, with my peers from high school now than I was during high school.”