Here is a joke for you:
A man and his wife are sitting in front of a computer, writing an e-mail: “Dear Andy: How have you been? Your mother and I are fine. We miss you. Please sign off your computer and come downstairs for something to eat. Love, Dad”
Funny? Yes. Sad? Even more so, mostly because it is so true. We think this scenario doesn’t apply to us and technically it doesn’t. I am sure no parents live in a dorm with their child. But consider the following situations:
I. A girl tweets her roommate to let her know they need to talk instead of actually going to talk to her, which might be easier since they live together. (Guilty)
II. A guy uses the chat option on Facebook when he needs to tell his roommate something but is too lazy to walk the 2 feet between their rooms. (Guilty)
III. A student e-mails her classmate to ask questions about class while they are actually in class, but they never talk face to face.
IV. Every time a student wants to reschedule an exam or ask for an extension of a deadline he or she e-mails the professor. (Guilty)
Most of us can identify ourselves with at least one of the aforementioned scenarios because we are victims of societal disconnect due to our compulsive need to be connected on various social media platforms.
We tweet about our daily activities. We complain about school on our blogs. We write on friends’ Facebook walls to say hi. We look at friends’ pictures and read their status updates. We check our e-mails on our cell phones. We log onto Facebook as soon as we get to a computer just to see what is going on, in case something important happened during the five minutes we were offline.
We know who our floor mate from freshman year hooked up with, while studying abroad in Chile. We know where the guy, who we met while we were backpacking in Europe, is working now. We know how many shots of tequila the girls, whom we befriended while in Cancun for spring break two years ago, had last night. We know that the redhead from our history class overslept today. We know more about what our friends are doing than ever before, but we know our friends less than ever before. Since we spend so much time online trying to keep in touch with all the random people in our lives, we don’t have time to build real and deep relationships. We prefer breadth to depth in our relationships. Ironically, the easier it gets to communicate the harder it is to truly communicate.
Why do we spend so much time on Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, Hi5, Badoo (the list can go on and on)?
Our lives are hectic and busy. We run from an internship to school to work and then try to find time to study, write papers and hopefully get a few hours of sleep. We need something easy, quick and effective to help us stay in touch with family and friends. And here is the solution: Her Highness Social Media! The effectiveness and quickness reflect our fast-paced, productivity driven society.
Social media is a fast and easy way to communicate, but it is not better. It is not a replacement of face-to-face communication. It is an addition to it. We need to spend more time getting to really know the important people in our lives. We need to spend more time talking to people face to face and Skype video calls do not count as face-to-face communication.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not against social media. I am one of the poor addicted kids. I can’t go to bed without checking Twitter or wake up without logging onto Facebook first thing in the morning, even before I shower. I have a great excuse. For me social media is the only effective way I can stay in touch with my family in Europe and all my friends around the world. But that is just an excuse. The problem relates to our communication with the people who live in the same town as we do. Sometimes even on the same street. We, the digital natives, need to find a healthy balance between our use of social media and face-to-face communication. Social media gives us an opportunity to start a community and finish conversations for which we didn’t have time. However, the only way we can build a real community or a real relationship is through honest and meaningful face-to-face communication.
So sign off your computer. Go out and talk to people. Get to know who they are and what they think instead of reading what they had for breakfast and checking out their drunk pictures from Friday night at the bar.
I'm guilty of as you guessed it many (if not all) of the above mentioned scenarios. Even the parents emailing the child to come downstairs — when I'm home my parents text or call my cell phone for the same thing! I think the post important point you make is “It is not a replacement of face-to-face communication.” Exactly! I think many of us “digital natives” forget this. We're busy trying to connect to old friends, acquaintances and networking individuals we are forgetting who are real friends are until we really need them. Sad, but I think slowly we will learn.
Mariam, no worries we are not the only ones. My roommate often uses FBChat to talk to me because she is too lazy to walk the 2 meters between our rooms and of course I do the same. It is really sad that we have allowed something like this to happen. It seems that the more mediated the communication is the more comfortable we feel using it. E-mail, texting, Facebook are much easier for us than actually calling someone or talking face to face. I honestly do not answer phone calls from unknown numbers or numbers I do not recognize. I don't have an explanation why, but that is the case. On the other hand, my mom doesn't even look who is calling her, she just answers.
We were discussing the topic in one of my research classes today and the professor said that many MBA programs recognize the problem and now include communication boot camps. Has interpersonal communication become unnatural to us that we have to be into a graduate program to study how to communicate face to face?
[...] Social Media Is Not So Social | The Next Great Generation [...]
I feel like a lot of this sentiment, that social media is somehow fake interaction or less than “real” communication (an argument presented very well here), is predicated on the notion that there was some golden era of face-to-face communication. I'm not sure it was ever like that. In fact I think things are better now than ever.
If I'm heading downtown for the night I might tweet about it, and if other friends of mine are around they'll see it and possibly we'll meet up. Impossible without social media. Calling everyone I know in Boston when I'm going out for the night just isn't practical, even if it's just my closer friends. And so social media allows me to get more face time, not less.
I think that treating virtual communication vs real communication as a zero sum game is a mistake. I think the real argument here isn't: are we using social media too much? but rather: are we using it to its full potential? To connect with people rather than disconnect. I think it's probably a little of both.
Research shows that face-to-face time with friends and family is good for us stress/emotional/health-wise (sorry, couldn't find a reference). Phone time, even with the same people, is more likely to be disruptive to our well-being. I would venture to say social media time is closer to phone time than to face-to-face time.
In any case, there are still benefits to using social media to communicate with those who are truly far away from you. I stay in closer contact to far-away relatives now than I did years ago.
Thanks for a great blog entry!
I completely agree with you, Jason. Yesterday, a friend of mine posted on Facebook that one of our favorite bars is donating all of its profits this Friday to Haiti. Just in the responses to that status, she gathered 5 people to go with her (myself included).
Social media has added a layer of convenience into our lives. Some use it for good and some use it for evil.
Christine and Jason, I see your point and I agree with it. However, I am talking about the times when we replace face-to-face communication with blog entries and Facebook status updates. I remember reading Jess Kim's interview on TNGG a while ago and she said that sometimes she has nothing to say to her friends because she has read about everything new in their lives on their blogs. Isn't that sad?
Social networks are great to connect with many people, especially the ones who live far away. But it is not a replacement to face-to-face communications; it is in addition to it.
Gina,
Thanks for the information. Although I don't have data to back it up, I am sure you are right that face-to-face communication is healthy for us. Of course, it takes time and it might not be as quick and as convenient as social networks, but it is our natural gift to communicate and we should appreciate it.