Effects of Social Media on Interpersonal Communication - Essay Example

EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION By Location Introduction With the ever advancing technology, people all over the world are shifting the modes in which they pass information to their various audiences. It becomes more fascinating how one can communicate with another person who is miles away just at the comfort of his/her living room. Social media have provided various platforms for communication including face book, tweeter and Whatsapp among others which have really fascinated young people especially youths in colleges. They find these modes of communication most convenient because they are able to reach many of their pals with whom they might have parted long time ago. Today, even older people who are the youth’s parents have also been introduced to the same because some parent and child conversations are found on face book. However, research has shown that online communication, including face book, has had a negative effect on our effective face to face communication techniques. Since people are used to sending messages over the internet, it can be difficult for them to express themselves when they meet with the person face to face as it were in the past. For instance you may visit a certain gathering and find almost half the people busy chatting on their smart phones yet there are people around them with whom they can chat. This generally indicates that maybe the confidence to express our views with people face to face has been eradicated by the constant use of social media. This paper tries to analyze areas in which Facebook as a social media communication platform has affected the inter-personal communication skills of people, especially the youth (Trottier, 2012). Impacts of Face Book on Communication Facebook takes the largest share of the impacts because it is greatly accepted by most people and has many users than the other forms. The trend at which people are socializing on face book than they do face to face is worrying since that indicates that their personal communication skills are diminishing. Therefore, the reason why they prefer online communication is that the person on the other end will not have to criticize communication skills expressed since they are looking at each other as they converse. This can explain why people can sit in a restaurant or even at parties and chat over their phones without even saying a word to their immediate neighbour. It is evident that people accept so many new friend requests on face book yet they don’t care to say hi to stranger they meet on the streets. This shows that our interpersonal communication and social skills are below standard and we would not want them known to the people around us (Al-Zubi, Crowther & Worsdale, 2008). Since technology is advancing over years, it means that online communication will be the only way people will communicate in future since this trend is seriously cropping up in the young generation. Recent studies have shown that out of four people, one of them totally prefers communicating online and this ratio will automatically increase in the near future. If that happens, then we would have leaders who will not be able to address their followers in person since the same people who spend most of their time on Facebook are the ones being nurtured into future leaders. Continued use of face book will create a shift in the communication network since once a certain trend has been cultivated; it becomes difficult to make a U-turn of events (Peltokorpi, 2006). Effective communication is based on two aspects which are; verbal and non-verbal communication. Verbal communication, which only contributes 7% of effective communication, is based on words which may be written or directly from one’s mouth. Face book may be included under the verbal communication because it involves people posting their views for other to read and that’s all. On the other hand, non-verbal communication, which accounts for the remaining 93%, encompasses the gestures and body movements done by a person during communication. Therefore, this is the best mode of judgement of whatever is being communicated since the body language will speak louder either to affirm or oppose whatever has been said or written by the person. Non-verbal communication is so important that it can pass message even without the person speaking hence the largest percentage contribution (Trottier, 2012). Face book has failed in making it possible for people to judge other’s non-verbal cues hence sometimes information can be misinterpreted or some important information missed out. When parents chat with their children on face book, they may sometimes lie to them on matters to do with their progress in their colleges. Sometimes teenagers fail even to pick calls from their parents because they don’t feel like expressing themselves which forces their parents to engage them on face book and follow their conversations. Such situations have caused parents to fail to recognize issues affecting their children hence fail to guide and counsel them. For instance, a story is told of a woman who conversed via messages with her daughter who was a student in a certain college. During the chatting, the mother was not able to tell that her daughter was experiencing some form of stress in her life because of lack of the non-verbal form of communication. Later on it was discovered that she used to stay in her hostel, always crying and was totally stressed up; a different story that she had told her mother over the phone. Therefore, it was reported that the daughter had tried to commit suicide that very night after chatting with her mother and lying to her that she was alright. If the mother had talked to the daughter face to face, then she would discover something wrong with her from her facial expressions and voice tone; hence she would guide her to prevent the suicide attempt (Eisend, 2002). Online communication on face book has totally affected communication on the negative side because apart from making people unable to communicate face to face, the information is not effectively communicated. Since nonverbal communication skills make the largest percentage of effective communication, its absence in social media communication distorts the manner in which information is received. Due to the way online communication has negatively affected our ability to interact with others in person, it has even become a better option to exchange posts on face book than meeting and discussing the issue face to face. T make matters worse, some people fear talking over the phone such that they would even better communicate via text messages. Social media has lowered people’s self-confidence of communicating with others on actual encounters since they feel more confident when they chat via face book without being seen. This has prevented people from meeting each other mere often as they used to do in the past when the platform was not available. If people cannot feel less free to talk to others on actual encounter as compared to the numerous face book chats, then it means that it will be difficult to build long lasting relations with each other due to poor personal connections (Peltokorpi, 2006). According to the past definitions about a friend, this is someone with whom you are so close with and interact frequently on personal grounds. However, face book has changed this definition whereby people may have hundreds of friends with whom they have never met face to face. The time frame within which they share posts may even after months or so, and this is a great impact of the communications done by friends who meet in person. Normally, when friends meet at a restaurant, they talk their views out to each other and this might even last for a whole day because they are used to each. Although face book enables one to interact with people of different classes and age brackets, these conversations may just last minutes yet they are termed as friends on their pages. Therefore, calling them friends does not indicate that they are that close to each other like their other offline friends. Some teenage face book users who have become addicted with social media just go on accepting and sending friend requests to people they don’t know hence making some cold conversations on face book. Some of these friends are people they have never met in their whole lifetime and making face book the first encounter makes communication non effective since they are not open. Some of the relationships that start in such a manner involving strangers end up breaking up due to some lies told in the chats. When the other party comes to discover that truth that is contrary to what he/she was told, the good relationship codes come to a standstill (Lueg & Finney, 2007). Elements of Self-disclosure Self-disclosure is a technique by which someone can tell more about your communication; either verbally or non-verbally. The clothes we wear can pass out some message about who we really are for instance long dresses or skirts may suggest a church goer or maybe a wedding context. To be more specific, self-disclosure can be done when one has the intention of revealing some information about him or herself to the public. For example on face book, someone may post a photo containing an Arsenal jersey to show passion for football or the team he/she supports. Self-disclosure can also be in the form of small conversations that build up with time as they become more frequent. For instance, when you meet a new friend on face book, the amount of information you will share will be shallower as compared to that shared with long term mutual friends. This shallow information shared may continue to widen with time and lead into a strong friendship link with the person who was once new to you (Beaudoin, & Thorson, 2004). The amount of information shared during self-disclosure on face book also depends on the person with whom you are conversing. One may fail to reveal too much about love life if the target is a new boy or girlfriend hence varying the amount of information said about past experiences in love life. Additionally, if the new friend is a professional who can help one get a job, most of the chats will be professional, trying to hide out most of the social part of the person. At some point, one may post something on face book and on revisiting the post, a feeling of deleting it catches up with the mind. This is because sometimes self-disclosure can lead to disclosing some information that was not worth reaching the public hence leading to embarrassment or unmanageable stresses. For instance, a lady who has hooked up with more than one man may post something suggesting that she was with one of them. If the other man realizes that she has a new catch, then he might pull off, yet he might have been the potential husband for the lady. Therefore, self-disclosure should be done with extreme care so that integrity is maintained and its positive interpersonal effects felt (Chen, Gable & Hu, 2013). The social penetration theory of self-disclosure states that as people get to know each other, the self-disclosure process reciprocates and its depth increases in that more sensitive and personal information is shared. Topics that are discussed in the conversation also start changing depending on the motive of the relationship and this is the breadth aspect of self-disclosure. For instance, love topics will not be discussed in a scenario where a love partner is not being searched for. Another aspect of self-disclosure is the fact that the amount of information shared and this varies depending on the relationship. Family members may share a lot as compared to the information they will share with members outside the family domain. Face book chats between a mother and child may disclose much about them that the child may not disclose to his/her friend. Not so much information may be shared with a friend whose request has been newly accepted despite the fact that friends will be told more about our present (Nie, 2001). Conclusion Communication experts should take into consideration that social media is changing the way in which people are expressing themselves during communication. People tend to prefer communicating via social media e.g. face book and this weakens the strong connections with people. However, we should be ready to accept the fact that social media will be the most widely used form of communication in the coming future. Therefore, we should be ready to accept it as it is and stop seeing it a shift from normal communication techniques. Since we have always adapted to new forms of technology that come our way, it can be agreed that with time this techniques will one day be considered normal. 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