Facebook, new media changes experience abroad

IU alumnus Scott Wade said he never felt more alone than when he lived in China in 1985.

“I had no way of communicating with the outside world from March to July,” Wade said. “It wasn’t that I was running away from anything, but because I was so far inside of that place, I just couldn’t see out.”

At the time Wade participated in an IU-China exchange program, he said students had only been traveling to China since 1983. Because mail traveled so slowly between the two countries, the only contact Wade had with his family was a bag of crumbled cookies sent by his grandma. 

“It was still a very foreign place at that time,” Wade said. “I would not see anything in China that looked familiar to me, even the English language.”

According to an Institute of International Education report on collegiate study abroad programs, 2,023 IU-Bloomington students enrolled in a study abroad program during the 2010-11 school year.

However, the increasing number of students traveling overseas in 2013 have new ways of contacting families and friends. Through social media sites such as Facebook and Skype, students studying abroad have a kind of access that Wade said he could not have imagined 30 years ago.

“I’m not saying communication now is bad,” Wade said. “I just think my experience is what foreign travel should be. I think I was changed, and I wonder now if students really come back changed, because they never really disconnect.”

In a recent commentary in the Chronicle for Higher Education titled “How Facebook Can Ruin Study Abroad,” professor of communication at Trinity University Robert Huesca said access to home through social media and the Internet inhibits students’ experience of cultural immersion.

“We live in a world with so much intercultural communication, you can’t really look at immersing yourself in a culture as completely taking away your old culture,” sophomore Michael Young said. “In order to immerse yourself in a new culture, you don’t have to necessarily get rid of everything that represents your home culture.”

Young spent a year in Germany after high school in a government-funded exchange program before attending IU and said he would check Facebook about once a day and Skype with his parents no more than once a week.

Though he said he understands Huesca’s criticism, he doesn’t believe his cultural experience was greatly hurt by his Internet use.

“Because of how much social media plays in our lives, you can’t really avoid it,” Young said. “All of my friends in Germany had Facebook, and a lot of the time I would talk to my friends from Germany. It made me feel more connected to that culture.”

Associate Vice President for Overseas Study Kathleen Sideli said increased connectivity between families and students overseas is advantageous from a health and safety perspective.

“Just in the last two years alone, there have been earthquakes in Japan, New Zealand, Chile and Italy,” Sideli said. “There were violent demonstrations in Egypt and Jordan. Email and cellphone communication allow us to know quickly which of our students were impacted by events in those countries.”

Still, Sideli, who has a daughter who is currently abroad, said she tries to keep minimal contact outside of occasional emails.

“I’m not a typical example,” Sideli said. “Families and children have to come to terms with what their goals are so they can have enough family contact to help the student’s experience, but not enough contact to interfere with the student’s experience.”

Wade said his culture-shocked experience in China was a life-changing journey that affected how he viewed the world still to this day.

But as a father, he does like the idea of having a form of communication with his son if something were to go wrong.

“I would like it, though, if he needed help or there was danger that he could communicate with me,” Wade said. “But as far as daily communication, I think he would like to enjoy that space alone. He can tell me all about it when he gets home.”

Young said he knows a friend who deleted his Facebook profile before traveling abroad, and his transition back to friends in the United States proved difficult. He said maintaining those relationships at home is important to him.

“It’s a good idea to immerse yourself in the culture as much as possible, but I don’t think whatever small difference there might be in how immersed you are in the culture is worth losing all your close friends,” Young said.

Traveling with Internet connection or not, Wade said he encourages any college student to travel while they are still young.

“I’m 50 now, and these kind of chances are once-in-a-lifetime,” Wade said. “You don’t get to do things like that twice. You need to completely absorb everything around you and not waste a minute looking at a cellphone or wondering who’s dating who back in Bloomington.”