Go to page: 1 2   

Printer Friendly Version

I know that social media is a very divisive topic, but I didn't know to what extent until I wrote last month’s op-ed column, “Is Social Media Diluting the Message?”. The article brought out strong proponents and opponents on either side of the issue.

On one side, proponents extolled the benefits of a hyper-connected world and boasted social media's ability to connect people with each other, completely free of geographic barriers. On the other side, opponents warned of the potential social and physiological dangers Web sites have on our abilities to relate to, and interact with, others at a human level -- some even went as far as claiming that the widespread use of social media Web sites are effectively “rewiring” the minds of young users.

A fellow writer in the medical community informed me of various discussions among psychologists and neuroscientists who are debating the potential harms of online social networking -- especially among children. They contend that human beings evolved to communicate with the use of all five senses. We communicate and gather physical cues through body language, eye contact, touch, smell, and inflections in our speech. But when you limit or eliminate all these nuances and boil down the complexities of communications to text on a monitor, something is lost.

The emotion, context, and meaning of our communications can't be adequately captured with a simply emoticon or “my mood is” state on social media sites. I once had an unfortunate incident when someone I was connected to through an online social networking site mistook my rather benign message stating, “I resent the email” (“resent”, in this case, meant “to send something once again”), to mean that I “felt bitter or indignant” about her email.

So, with the prevalence of social media Web sites, for both business and play, how is communication going to change in the future? More importantly, how are we going to change?

Go to page: 1 2   

Printer Friendly Version