How Social Media Has Impacted Our Ability To Communicate With One Another
Written by: Juliette Santulin (W’25); Edited by: Saya Desai (C’ 25)
According to Statista, around 3 billion people use social media, which amounts to around 40% of the total world population. In fact, it is rare to find people around us who don’t have or use at least one social media app.
Whether it is FaceTiming friends or family in different countries or playing games with people across the globe, we all know that social media has allowed us to broaden the circle of people with whom we communicate. We are no longer limited to communicating with a limited number of people as social media gives us access to what seems like an infinite amount of people. Thanks to social media, this communication is also made much faster and more efficient. Thankfully, we now have options other than sending letters to each other or calling through phones. Moreover, social media has allowed us to connect with others who share similar interests. Whether it’s Instagram accounts for food, dogs, or a TV show, a Facebook group, or a comedy TikTok page, we get to form groups with a purpose or bond over shared passions.
On the other hand, social media has also negatively impacted communication. Most of us can agree that social media apps are addictive, and it is getting increasingly hard to stay off our phones. Furthermore, surveys show an increasing trend that adults prefer to spend time on their phones rather than with people. If we dive even deeper into the negative effects of social media, we notice that people are starting to have less meaningful conversations with each other. Now, people are getting bored when having real, in-person conversations because they are used to consuming large amounts of instant social media content. You can probably think of a time when you were having dinner with friends, and you or they couldn’t resist checking your phones instead of talking to each other. Similarly, people are less excited to meet others because they have access to so many more people on social media. Since communication through social media doesn’t allow us to pick up on non-verbal cues, people are becoming less aware of others’ needs based on in-person communication cues. Finally, whether this is a good or bad thing, we can say anything we want on social media because we are hiding behind a screen. For example, new apps like Sidechat encourage us to say whatever is on our minds because everything is anonymous. However, anonymous platforms can lead to more bullying or an abandonment of the social norms of accountability for your words.
Social media has also impacted our communication style. Our messages have been getting increasingly shorter. It is now normal to send short messages to friends or tweet 140-character posts. Other areas of communication have adapted for summarized writing as well, such as shortened work memos, shortened communication between students and professors, and shortened messages in advertising. Also, the creation of emojis and GIFs may seem fun and innocent, but they interfere with our ability to communicate properly. People are starting to replace written messages with emojis or animated pictures—think of the crying face emoji, skull emoji, or even the heart emoji.
Our over-dependence on social media is increasing daily, just as our communication style is constantly changing. Talking speed is replaced by typing speed; people are losing their natural tendencies and are becoming slaves of technology. Our world is continually evolving, and it is becoming hard for us to ignore how social media enables us to communicate rapidly and concisely. However, we must make an effort to limit the amount of time we spend on social media because there is a high risk that our society will lose the true beauty of connection if we continue down this path.