Living With Social Anxiety in the Digital Age

   As a person who deals with social anxiety on a daily basis, this topic is really important to me. Some people say that socially anxiety is just someone being shy, no, that's not the case at all. It's actually really crippling, especially in an environment such as a physical classroom. In college, you sign up for classes every semester with a bunch of total strangers usually in an unfamiliar place since you're not likely to be in the same classrooms every semester. To a person with social anxiety this makes the learning process incredibly difficult. 

   An anxious person will not want to ask questions about the material so learning can be somewhat difficult if the material itself is difficult. The exposure to a room full of strangers can trigger panic attacks which can result in said anxious student not having any will to go to class and eventually just dropping the class.

    One nightmare for a person that's suffering from anxiety is a public speaking class. Public speaking is required for quite a few degrees/programs and the thought of giving a speech in front of a bunch of strangers for a socially anxious person is almost enough to kill them. Taking it online is significantly less stressful so said person can get their needed credit worry free! The electronic classroom is really an amazing thing for someone who suffers from severe anxiety. You can feel free to ask as many questions as needed through email or discussion boards since it's much less stressful to an anxious person to just be a wall of text on a message board rather than asking a stranger face-to-face whatever question he or she may have. 

    

    As a person with social anxiety, I can say from my own personal experience that I'm able to be much more social via message boards or Facebook or whatever. As an example; I'm really interested in politics, but, I know I could never go and strike up debate with strangers. Using a site such as Facebook, as much as I really don't care for it, gives me a forum to do so. I'm also very interested in cutting hair, makeup, and vintage hairstyles. YouTube allows me to learn how to do all of these things quite well but without the stressful classroom type environment. It sounds a bit crazy when written out, but it is what it is and digital media and the internet expanding to the point where people can teach, talk, or share interests in an instant is really something amazing for people dealing with anxiety.

- Hollie Adams