Breaking Stereotypes

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From a young age I can remember pulling myself out of bed on any day I didn’t have school and before I even had breakfast setting myself up at my Xbox to play with my online friends. We would play games the entire day and I thought nothing of it. Though as I got older I realized how many people look down on the idea of playing videogames all day long. Teenagers like myself are often stereotyped to having no social life, when in reality most of them have friends that they have met online and society doesn’t understand how those friendships work, how important they are to us, and how they are actually very similar to in-person friendships.
I don’t know how many times I have heard these expressions, “He must live in his parents basement!”, “They need to get off their butt and try to have a social life” when people refer to teens who play a lot of videogames. I may spend a lot of my free time in front of a screen talking to people on the other side of the country but I am far from lacking a social life. In high school I was in band and on the Color guard team where I made a lot of amazing friends my online friends were just an addition to my life. Many of my online friends tell me stories about the friends they have in person. I may not see these people in person but after spending countless hours talking to them for years I assure anyone who questions me, I most certainly have a healthy social life and so do my friends.
Having played videogames since a young age and later playing games online I have met a wide variety of people from all over the world. I consider many of these people my friends, along with the friends I also have in person. It is common for anyone who plays Xbox online to become a part of a group, very similar to ...

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...to our headsets in effort to be as annoying as we can, or mail a gag gift on someone’s birthday or Christmas. Moments like these make me feel like we’re all hanging out and joking around, I can picture my friends pushing and nudging each other jokingly fighting about who gets to sit on the couch and who has to sit on the floor, acting like a bunch of children.
These friends are my chosen family, I couldn’t ask for better people in my life. Corey, Johnny, Jack, are amazing people who all have jobs, hobbies, and go to school. My best friend and boyfriend Ethan, who I met 5 years ago on Xbox live and have met in person, has helped me through so many rough points in my life, we have had our struggles but always work through them just like any good friend would. We are not lazy, we have amazing friends whom we talk to everyday, and we do not live society’s stereotype.

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