Forming new friendships and relationships can be very challenging for many individuals, especially in high school. Thankfully, people now have social media, messaging, and many other ways to stay connected and reach out to new people. However, with these new things comes new experiences. One in particular is ghosting.

The term ghosting means to end a personal relationship with someone by suddenly discontinuing any ways of communication without giving the other person any reason or explanation as to why it happened. So, if someone is ghosted, they simply get the pleasure of receiving the other end of the stick.

Some students at LHS have had these experiences.

“A friend of the guy I was talking to told me that the guy I was talking to was going to ghost me. When I confronted him about it, he said it was true, so we ended it. About a month later, I began talking to the friend and after a good month or two he ghosted me because I had started somewhat talking to another guy”, an anonymous junior girl said.

There are some students who even had quite a list of ghosting encounters.

“Last year, this boy asked me if I wanted to go get food with him one day, and I said yes because I like food and I didn’t think he was being serious about it in general. Later, he told everyone we were dating because I had agreed to get food with him. He told his mom, who asked me about it, and I later had to explain that it wasn’t true, and our whole class. I told him we never were dating and he told me, ‘How do you expect me to tell all of my friends that you broke up with me after two days?’ I told him, ‘You can tell them we never dated.’ I cut that off really quickly. I just stopped replying to him,” an anonymous junior girl said.

Sometimes people simply lose feelings which can be a sad inconvenience.

“I believe this was around middle school. This boy, who is also my neighbor, had feelings for me and at the time. I did like him back, but I never dated him or anything. Later on he finally decided to message me and say he had feelings for me, but I no longer felt the same way at that point. I told him I didn’t feel the same way and that he should find someone else because he deserves better. He was not happy with that and then told me I was a bad person and wondered how I could do something like this to him. We stayed friends either way and still are, but one day I sent him a TikTok that I guess mislead him. He thought I had feelings for him. I again had to explain that I just thought the video was funny and it meant nothing else. I then decided to stop talking to him and ignore him because of that whole situation,” said an anonymous junior girl.

Some experiences are better just being stopped immediately rather than giving that person another chance.

“There was this guy who would always Snapchat me or try messaging me, and I don’t like to be rude so I would answer from time to time or at least send something back that was short. I continued on with being nice, and then one night it all went wrong. He started saying weird things, and it made me uncomfortable. So, I decided to stop responding as the night went on, but he still tried messaging me. After a while I saw that he sent me a Snapchat and decided to open it. To my surprise it was an unsolicited photo. Immediately, after that, I took it upon myself to block him and discontinue any further conversations,” an anonymous junior girl said.

One student has dealt with both sides of the spectrum starting with the ghosting side.

“I had been talking to this boy, who is actually messaging me right now, and I am currently ignoring it. This is about the fifth time I’ve ghosted him in the last year. I don’t really know why I ghosted him. I just simply didn’t want to talk to him anymore. He’s so sweet and would call me nice things, but I guess once I feel like I’ve had enough, I go back to the person who treats me badly. The time I got ghosted however was by this guy who had a brother that I worked with. We had been talking and everything was fine, but then he just randomly un-added me in the middle of a conversation. His brother also decided to un-add me as well,” an anonymous junior girl said.

Ghosting isn’t might seem like the only solution, but sometimes a kind reply ending things can be just effective and help keep some respect and integrity.