Social Media Change

How has social media changed communication?

The first thing I think of when I think about how social media has changed communication is text messaging. I remember when I had all of my friend’s home phone numbers memorized, and now I do not even have my husband’s number memorized. If I ever need to communicate with someone it is predominantly through my cell phone. All of the numbers are saved in it, so there is no need for me to remember anyone’s number, and I do not have to actually call them I can just text them. While I do prefer text messaging, I do think it is less personal than a phone call.

Higher Ed Marketing Journal published an article called “6 Ways Social Media Changed the Way We Communicate” http://circaedu.com/hemj/how-social-media-changed-the-way-we-communicate/

It talks about how social media has created a sense of urgency to share aspects of our lives on different media platforms. With twitter we can instantaneously share what we are doing. With media like Snapchat and Instagram, there are temporary ways to share, such as the stories that will disappear after 24 hours. If you want to see everything that is going on, you need to be checking all of these sources multiple times a day. It is that sense of not wanting to miss out I do not remember having until I joined Facebook for the first time in middle school. I did not care about what everyone was doing until I was part of a place that made it possible to know.

Another point from this article is it made the world smaller. If you had wanted to talk to someone across the world you would need to coordinate time zones and how much extra it would cost to place a long distance call. With instant messaging on Facebook or many other platforms you can have direct access to almost everywhere on the planet.

In an article from Future of Work,  https://fowmedia.com/social-media-changed-communicate/ it talked about how social media has brought about a lack of face to face social skills. How sometimes people can carry on conversations perfectly fine while online, but when speaking to someone physically they have a hard time. I can relate to this, when I first got a phone when I was in ninth grade sometimes it was much easier to text someone that to talk to them in person. I felt very awkward when I was around them, but I could text them for hours.

Another example of how social media has changed communication is the use of abbreviations. Because it is such a fast paced way to communicate, we are always finding new ways to shorten our language so that it can be put out there more quickly. Social media has had a huge impact on how we communicate.