At 7:25 every night I say goodbye to my best friend: my BlackBerry. I slide my phone into the box labeled with my last name in the common room and trudge down the long hallway to my room. At 7:30, my prefect’s voice echoes loudly through the dorm: “Study hall’s in, girls!!” Great.

Now for the worst part. My Internet shuts off. I am stuck sitting uncomfortably at a wooden desk for two hours. Unable to text, Facebook, IM, or video chat until 9:30, when the Internet is back and all is as it should be.

Cruel and unusual punishment? Every teenage girl’s worst nightmare? Yes and yes. I suffered my whole freshman year for two hours straight every night, disconnected from the social media world. Luckily, at the beginning of my sophomore year we made an amazing discovery.

Most kids at my school, including me, have a Mac, and someone found an application called Bonjour. Bonjour is only accessible via a Mac computer and through the iChat application. When I am at school and connected to the wireless Internet, I can access a buddy list that shows all the students with Macs who are online. It’s like AIM but accessible through Macs only. We all thought it was pretty cool, but we didn’t know just how amazing it was.

One evening I was sitting at my uncomfortable wooden desk when an IM popped up on my screen. I was confused. It was 8:32. This was when I realized that Bonjour worked during study hall! Now every night we all log on and stay connected without the house parents even knowing. Sometimes we even video chat with the boys in the other dorms!

My dorm is insanely strict, and they take study hall very seriously. Being on time is a must, and Bonjour (which of course they found out about) is strictly prohibited from 7:30-9:30 or your computer is taken away for a week. So you have to be very careful.

Bonjour is both rebellious and dangerous, but in my opinion it’s totally worth it. We don’t use it just for meaningless gossip; we do occasionally bring up homework questions and due dates. This is extremely helpful, considering that we are not allowed to leave our rooms during study hall without permission.

In a world where texting, IM, Facebook, Twitter and other connections to the world via the Internet are so alive and constantly used, it’s hard to hold us back! It just goes to show: You can’t stop the social media world, because it’s constantly opening new doors every day.

Posted by Taryn M., age 15, Connecticut