IS TECHNOLOGY ENHANCING
COMMUNICATION OR DESTROYING
IT?
It’s around six o’clock and my phone buzzes
with a text from my sister telling me dinner is ready.
She had been downstairs helping my mom prepare
dinner. However, if it were just my mom downstairs
making dinner, I would have heard someone yelling
for me to come down to dinner. What changed
between these two generations? Why does one rely so
heavily on technology to communicate? And what
effect does this have on our society?
Prior to 1920, the only media that impacted
the American family was print. What is so common
now, could not have been seen even just thirty years
ago. As a society, our means of communication has
progressively shifted with the aid of technology.
Face-to-face communication and even phone calls
have taken a backseat in the ways in which people
communicate. Now, texting and social media sites
are the preferred methods of communication for many.
A study done for online casino Yazino showed that
one in four people spend more time socializing online,
through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter,
than they do in person. It was also found that 11% of
adults would rather remain at home and communicate
via their devices even when there is an opportunity to
see people face-to-face. Paul Booth, PhD, an assistant
professor of media and cinema studies in the College
of Communication at DePaul University in Chicago
explained, “There has been a shift in the way we
communicate; rather than face-to-face interaction,
we’re tending to prefer mediated communication.”
Mediated communication refers to e-mail and texting
as opposed to meeting in person or talking on the
phone.
According to Booth, this shift in
communication has led to a shift in human
relationships, making them only skin-deep.
Communication within families is changing;
http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/1215571/families-turn-technology-aid-communication-research-shows/
some believe this has led to families becoming more
distant rather than closer. It used to be much more
common for families to sit down to the dinner table
together, without the interference of technology.
Some families do still sit down to dinner together, but
it is rare to not find a cell phone nearby. In research
done by Microsoft Advertising, it was found that one
in three families frequently use technological devices
to communicate while in the same house. This
communication includes telling when dinner is ready
or asking for help with homework. The Families
study was conducted by the research agency Sparkler
for Microsoft Advertising. It found that more than
half of siblings communicate with each other through
instant messaging or text messages and 30% utilize
social networks. It is easy to avoid face-to-face
communication with the
use
of texting.
Improvements in the means of communication
through technology can be seen as negative and
deteriorating people’s abilities to interact face-to-face.
Technology has enhanced my ability to
nurture my relationships; I speak to my grandfather
who suffers from Alzheimer’s every day to check in
and keep him up to date on my life. We are three
hours apart, but I can easily talk to him every day.
After high school, one of my good friends moved to
Hawaii, but with a simple text message, we can
remain in contact. When my sister studied abroad in
Prague last year, we were able to stay in contact via
different apps on the iPhone, which allowed for
communication through Wi-Fi. This is all thanks to
the cell phone, which has made communication much
easier.
Technology provides an ease to communicate
with others that previous generations did not have.
My dad constantly reminds me about when he was in
college, he had to use a pay phone to call home. He
explains to me that he would call home every Sunday
night, because he knew his parents would be home at
that time. Texting allows for constant and easy
communication. At school, I prefer to call my parents
whenever I have the chance, rather than texting. But,
I have seen that many would rather text their parents
to keep them updated. When discussing this topic
with a peer, she explained, “I text my mom on a
mostly daily basis so she knows what’s going on in
my life. If I had to call her to let her know what was
going on, then I would talk to her a lot less.”
Childhood friendships are altering due to the
shift in communication, which eventually establishes a
lack of communication skills. I am sure you have
heard your parents saying something along the lines of,
“when I was your age, I had to call my friend’s house
phone to see if they wanted to hang out.” Now, things
are much different. A simple text or instant message
takes the place of that phone call. Prior to all of this
technology, children used to actually speak to their
friends; they spent time on the phone or playing in the
neighborhood. Today, two children can verse each
other in a game on the computer or sit side by side on
laptops and call it a “play date”. Generations before
experienced intense childhood relationships in which
they really got to know someone. Unfortunately,
today’s children may be missing out on that.
But, these childhood friendships are necessary
to develop. They lay the foundation for relationships
later in life. Childhood relationships are key to
understanding empathy, reading social cues, and
comprehending
emotions.
Gary
Small,
a
neuroscientist and professor of psychiatry at U.C.L.A.
and an author, uses the term “digital natives” to
describe the generation that has grown up with
This graph displays how people
hear about events in their friends’
lives broken down by age group.
As age decreases, so does the
percentage of phone calls.
However, the percentage of text
messages increases as age
decreases. Almost half of people
ages 18 to 29 hear about
noteworthy events in their circle
of friends via Facebook.
http://www.futureofmediaevents.com/2011/01/14/study-facebook-changing-the-way-peoplecommunicate-hear-about-news/
computers. Small notes that digital natives are already
experiencing difficulty reading social cues.
According to Forbes, studies show that 7% of
communication is centered on the written or verbal
word and the other 93% is centered on nonverbal body
language. Contrary, others maintain that technology
allows children to be closer because it allows them to
be in constant contact with their friends.
The use of text messaging as a form of
communication is rising.
According to a Pew
Research Center survey, in 2000, the number of text
messages sent in a month was around 14 billion. In
2010, that number had risen to 188 billion. The Pew
Research Center also found that in 2010, about half of
American teenagers between the ages of twelve and
seventeen sent 50 or more text messages in one day
and more than one-third sent over 100 text messages
in one day. The Pew Research Center’s Internet and
American Life Project conducted another survey from
which they found that two thirds of texters use their
cell phones for texting rather than calling. About 54%
of the teenagers surveyed explained that they text their
friends once a day and about 33% of teenagers said
they speak to their friends face-to-face on a daily basis.
This could mean that texting is replacing face-to-face
communication. But, it could be that face-to-face
communication is not available and so teenagers
choose to text rather than lose touch completely. It
appears that younger generations prefer text messages
compared to telephone calls. According to CNN,
Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 send and
receive about 88 text messages in a day, but only
about 17 phone calls. And this is not restricted to
younger generations. The 65 year old and up age
range shows a similar trend. In this group, it is about
5 texts per day and only 4 phone calls.
In another survey on favored forms of
communication, people born between 1990 and 1999
showed texting as their preferred form of
communication, with instant messaging, phone calls,
and Facebook tied for second place, and in last place
was face-to-face communication. When people born
between 1946 and 1989 took the survey, they were
found to favor face-to-face communication. In the
TIME mobility poll, 32% of all respondents expressed
a preference of communicating via text rather than
phone call.
But not only is technology changing
communication, it is also seen as consuming the lives
of those that use it. In 2010, the Kaiser Family
Foundation found that Americans aged between eight
and eighteen spend approximately seven and a half
“AN 18-YEAR-OLD I INTERVIEWED
RECENTLY SAID, ‘SOMEDAY, BUT
CERTAINLY NOT NOW, I WANT TO
LEARN TO HAVE A CONVERSATION.’”
– SHERRY TURKLE
hours a day using an electronic device ranging from
smart phones to MP3 players to computers. That is
equal to almost a third of their day. Granted, the
whole seven and a half hours on electronic devices is
not spent communicating.
This
trend
is
damaging
people’s
communication skills. One debate on debate.org is
“Does texting have adverse effects on a person’s
ability to communicate in other manners?” 64%
percent of people responded yes, while the other 36%
responded no.
Larry Rosen, a professor of
psychology at California State University, Dominguez
Hills, explains that kids today rely strictly on written
communication, especially when communicating with
adults, which has the potential to hurt young people’s
communication skills. Sherry Turkle is an MIT
psychologist and researches the effects of texting on
interpersonal development. She believes that having a
conversation can teach a kid how to develop the
ability to think, reason, and self-reflect. Face-to-face
conversation teaches patience. This constant written
communication detracts from people’s conversational
skills. Turkle stated, "An 18-year-old I interviewed
recently said, 'Someday, but certainly not now, I want
to learn to have a conversation.'" Turkle explains that
when she talks to kids, they express a fear of
conversation.
Kids are exhibiting a conversation-phobic
demeanor. Turkle says it’s common for teenagers to
be socially awkward and want to avoid personal
interaction. But this avoidance is made much easier
by cell phones and social networking sites. People
that text way more than they engage in face-to-face
conversations lack the ability to read nonverbal visual
cues. Rob Hausler, a writer for Elite Daily explains,
“Texting on a daily basis makes it easy to avoid
speaking with people on the phone. We nowadays
tend to minimize face time and even minimize our
phone conversations.
By doing so, our
communication skills suffer- we start to lose our
conversation etiquette. Personal conversations also
suffer, becoming less natural and choppy, resembling
our text messaging conversations.” Without having
this skill, the real world might be intimidating.
Melissa Ortega, a child psychologist at New York’s
Child Mind Institute believes that kids “don’t know
how to handle conflict face to face because so many
things happen through some sort of technology.” She
goes on to say, “Clinically, I'm seeing it in the office.
The high school kids who I do see will be checking
their phones constantly. They'll use it as an avoidance
strategy. They'll see if they got a text message in the
two minutes they were talking to me."
Sherry Turkle wrote an article titled “The
Flight From Conversation” in the New York Times.
During one part of the article she states, “We’ve
become accustomed to a new way of being ‘alone
together.’” Turkle says that people oftentimes wear
earphones because they fear conversation. Is this a
generational issue? The environment in offices is
much quieter than it used to be. A senior partner at a
Boston law firm tells Turkle that young associates
“turn their desks into cockpits” with their technologies
laid out on their desks. Because these young lawyers
are so tuned into their cockpits, the office is almost
silent.
This constant use of text messages and social
networks is also detracting from peoples’ abilities to
communicate through writing.
A recent study
conducted by the National Center for Education
Statistics shows that one of four high school seniors
are proficient in writing. Kids are not learning how to
spell because they are consistently using acronyms
and short hand. Referring back to the debate on
debate.org, one of the respondents that voted yes
explains, “I teach third grade and my students show
evidence of writing in ‘text’ when they are doing
formal writing in the classroom. They write b4
instead of before, lol, etc.” She goes on to say that her
students see this language everywhere and so they
believe it is proper English.
Best selling author, Malcolm Gladwell
believes that although interaction may be increasing
because of the easiness of today’s communication, the
relationships established are often superficial.
Communication through social media oftentimes
creates weak, brief, and shallow relationships
preventing commitment. Written communication leads
to a lack of personal connection and strong
relationships. Booth identifies three main problems
with communication via social media. The first is that
people are more likely to trust someone over the
computer and so people are more open about what
they say. The second is that social media does not
allow for the deepening of relationships. This is
because social relationships are fortified more in faceto-face communication than through social media. The
third is that it lacks diversity of beliefs because people
prefer to network with those of similar views.
Within the past couple decades, the
technology industry has shifted the way in which
society
communicates.
This
change
in
communication has led to changes in the way in which
our youth develops their communication skills.
Although technology has made communication easier
and more constant, there is no doubt it has changed
and potentially has detracted from humans’ abilities to
communicate and the ways in which human beings
interact.
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