Communication is seen by definition as people connecting and coming to an understanding of information they are exchanging. In the past, this was done mainly through face-to-face conversations. As the world today has changed so much and continues to evolve, so have our methods of communication.
“Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission, to make the world more open and connected”, - Mark Zuckerburg, Facebook CEO.
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These were the words from the founder of one of the biggest social media companies in history, and debatably started this huge movement for communication via the Internet. Email did exist before this, but it never had that connection between people on this big of scale, taking the entire social experience between people and putting it online. Founded in February 2004, Facebook took the world by storm, when it expanded from being used in Harvard University exclusively by its students and being formerly known as ‘The Facebook’ to a worldwide phenomenon. The Facebook we know of today now renamed to just ‘Facebook’ allows people to connect with friends and loved ones wherever they may be across the world.
Pictures and videos can be shared through private messaging or can be uploaded to your Facebook profile page, where your entire personality is laid out for whoever views it. Interests, pictures, posts and who you are already friends with are displayed here, showing us the fact that in this modern society, we don’t actually have to talk to people in person in order to get to know them and their personality, and that this can now be done through looking at a screen and talking over the Internet.
There's a positive and a negative to everything, and social media sites and apps like Facebook are no exception. Sure, it may be easier now more than ever to chat with friends, share memories with photographs, meet new people and organize events or gatherings. But we lose that real connection, the bond between people that brings us satisfaction for every conversation we have with family or our friends.
“The more social media we have, the more we think we’re connecting, yet we are really disconnecting from each other”, - JR, French Artist (BrinayQuote.Com).
Yet there's the counter argument of it giving people more freedom to express themselves, having a voice on certain topics and not having to deal with social peer pressure. What if plans with friends or family change and you can’t meet when they do? How will people know of these changes without sending them a short text letting them know.
Which leads me into offline messaging, such as texting on a smartphone. Staying with the fact that you don’t even need to meet the person you are talking to anymore, face to face is becoming less and less relevant I feel. In certain situations, some people may not meet each other for months on end because of they just texting each other and thinking it’s enough. This can be seen as enough social behavior for months on end, before eventually meeting up face to face, making a huge dent and impact on our communication. Not even taking into account what effect it could have on one's mental health. However, if the person on the other end of the screen is halfway around the world for example, I think it’s perfectly necessary to communicate with them with the use of technology.
Alternative ways to do so instead of texting silently in front of a screen is video calling or skyping. So many tech companies today are pushing on the idea of this type of tech use. With many frequent advertisements on television and on various websites, this is being seen as the way to go for tech communication, despite the prices of these devices and cameras before rather pricey. A step further than this is undergoing research right now, and is being developed by oculus, the creators of the famous ‘VR Headset’. They’re undergoing development for being compatible with video calling, going for the incredible possibility of us feeling like we are even in the same room as the person we are in conversation with online, which is absolutely incredible.
In conclusion, technology will continue to evolve in the years to come, and so will communication with these changes. Whether they are positive or negative, this is simply the future. We can choose to embrace it or disregard it to a certain degree, but there’s no turning back. Tech style communication can and has created scenarios that we never thought were possible. I feel as long as we thread lightly and know our limits with them, our mental and social health will remain in a good place and our way of communication greatly enhanced.
References
- https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-to-do-virtual-reality-video-chat-or-calls
- https://pumpic.com/security/negative-health-effects-of-cell-phones/
- https://www.netflix.com/ie/title/70132721
- https://time.com/facebook-world-plan/
- https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg/story?id=54361994
- https://images.app.goo.gl/k4VNF7oiJbGnEhua7
- https://www.oculus.com/quest/?locale=en_US
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