Texting hurting Communication
Social media is a topic that has been brought up a lot recently
around the United States. What actually is considered social media? This is a
question that not many people know how to answer. If you were to ask me this
question I would say that anything involving communication using electrons to
talk to someone else is considered to be social media. So yes, I would say that
e-mailing and using cell phones is social media.
Many people would disagree that e-mailing
and cell phones are social media but I have found evidence in articles that I have
read to prove my point. In an article that Ashton Kutcher wrote called, Has Texting Killed Romance? He stated, “With
all this texting, e-mailing, and social networking, I started wondering, are we
all becoming so in touch with one another that we are in danger of losing
touch?” Also in another article called, Electronic
Intimacy it states, “E-mail and texting and interactions on Facebook
encourage more efficient and instantaneous affirmation of rejection of our
feelings.” Both of these article’s quotes are referring to texting and
e-mailing as social media.
When I sat down and thought about
what social media has done for us, it really has hurt a lot of humans. I
believe that social media has ruined the communication between people. You see
more and more people today who are in a large group but they are sitting on
their cell phones, not speaking to anyone else in the room. Eight years ago,
this would not be occurring. If there was a group of people sitting in a room,
most likely no one would be on their phones; they would probably be having conversations
with each other, not even worrying about their cell phone.
Since texting and e-mailing have been
brought up into this world, more and more people do it. They are taking
advantage of these two communication methods instead of speaking in person face
to face. When someone is in an argument they would rather not have to speak to
them in person but write an e-mail or text message. This causes a problem
because when they actually need to know how to handle in argument in person,
they don’t know how to.
If you were to walk through a
hallway of a high school, I bet you that at least eighty percent of the students
would be on their cell phone either looking at Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or
texting. Again eight years ago or even less you would not have seen this occurring
in schools. Because most people are texting these days, they are losing their
communication skills. When a text is sent, there is an unlimited amount of time
to send a message; you can have as much time as you want to think about what to
respond back with. If you were to have a conversation in person and didn’t know
how to respond, you are screwed because there is not an unlimited time.
Also texting has made grammar and
spelling go downhill. From my personal experience, I have been texting for a
long time now and I honestly can say that I don’t have the best spelling. I am
so relied on auto correct that is on my phone, I don’t even worry about
misspelling words in a text message. When it comes to writing an essay on
paper, it is hard for me to spell all of the words correctly because I am not
used to having to spell a word when it has been given to me most of the time.
Like I said, I even have a problem
with my communication with others because of social media. I think that most people
would agree with me too, but it is not like people are going to stop texting and
e-mailing each other because that is what people do in their everyday life. It
is kind of hard to change something in your life that occurs so frequently. It
would be nice though to have people cut down on using electronics to
communicate between people. The more people cut down on using electrons to
communicate, the better our communication will be between each other.
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