Gary Martin: What really killed the high school reunion?

School reunions aren't always all they're cracked up to be... Photo / Supplied, File

Opinion

OPINION

If you finished high school in 1990, it is likely you would have this year weighed up the pros and cons of pausing your regular Saturday night with Netflix for a once-in-a-lifetime event – your 30th school reunion.

In the years since graduation, you have dutifully ignored school reunion invitations. This time your curiosity has got the better of you and you respond to the invite with a "yes".

Unfortunately, the combination of social distancing, lingering lockdowns and self-isolation because of another once-in-a-lifetime event – the Covid-19 pandemic – has led to the likely cancellation of your school reunion.

If we are truthful, it is not just the pandemic that is killing off school reunions.

The death of the reunions started more than a decade ago, even if a barrage of plausible excuses (think: no babysitter, being out of town, on a tight budget, getting married) has camouflaged the real reason why so many of us end up failing to front at these events.

Once held up high as a fascinating opportunity to see how much or how little people can change over time, many believe school reunions are a thing of the past.

Reunions have never been a simple case of catching up with our long-lost classmates.

There were always any number of agendas at play that pushed us to attend.

Perhaps you are as inquisitive as a nosey next-door neighbour and could not resist the temptation to find out which of your former classmates had done well – and who had not.

You would also be keen to find out which of your classmates "voted" most likely to succeed had ended up failing spectacularly on multiple fronts, along with learning who had aged well and who had not.

Maybe you are desperately hoping for an apology from a reformed schoolyard bully who made your school days a misery. It is also possible you want to offer up a few apologies of your own.

And it is even conceivable that you are hoping to bump into your first love, want to show everyone how successful you have been or have a secret desire to show off a new "you" – an image you have been trying to craft ever since the last school reunion.

But how things have changed.

Social media (think: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even LinkedIn) has become the great spoiler.

You have followed a school-era crush's every detail of her past 15 years in your Facebook feed. A classmate has been using Instagram to document his love life while many have been boasting about their professional achievements on LinkedIn.

Social media has meant we are no longer left to wonder what happened to our classmates and no longer need to invest an evening of our time to find answers to those questions.

We have seen classmates get married, divorced and later remarry, purchase their cars, come out about their sexuality, have children and win and lose jobs. We have pretty much seen it all.

We know so much about our classmates that the curiosity – once a central feature of the school reunion – has been lost.

It is not that social media has been all bad. It has allowed us to stay connected with classmates and up to date – rather than out of touch – with their lives.

With the passing of these sometimes cringeworthy catchups, future generations will not experience the magic of reunions.

But there is still some hope for these once-in-a-decade events.

If the pandemic has taught us just one lesson, it is that we need and crave human contact.

Reading about our classmates' lives online is not the same as sharing laughs, tears, stories and experiences in person.

So, once it is safe to do so, perhaps break that date with your favourite streaming service and hot-foot it to your next school reunion.

• Professor Gary Martin is a workplace expert with the Australian Institute of Management.