BY DYLAN DACOSTA
Social media and cellphones both come with their own perks and, in fact, they are becoming more intertwined as technology and demand increases.
But with this comes a loss in the actual quality of the communication itself.
People have become used to the short forms of texting and Internet communication, causing society to, as a whole, lack clarity and depth of conversation.
Social media and cellphones have taught users to be concise, but at the same time they promote a lower quality of communication.
Rather than promoting quality over quantity, these things end up causing both a low quantity and quality.
Texting consists of short messages riddled with acronyms, short forms and poor grammar without actually providing any substance to a message – it’s more common to see happy faces than proper punctuation and insightful comments.
Facets of social media add to this problem. Twitter’s 140-character limit per tweet ends up resulting in a timeline full of condensed thoughts that are usually about trivial happenings in the day of the tweeter and have no intellectual value.
Facebook is no better. What started out as a tool to remain connected with distant friends has turned into a slideshow of self-taken pictures competing for “likes” rather than instigating some form of quality communication between the viewer and the poster.
Other facets of social media such as Tumblr and Instagram are even worse as they rely almost solely on images and contain very little written thought.
Both social media and devices such as cellphones have also impacted younger generations – they can barely string a sentence together.
The ease of fixing mistakes with tools such as Spellcheck means that many people are sloppy when writing, not only in texting or social media usage but also in formal written work.
Efficiency has killed quality, so many kids (and adults, too) write as simply as they can instead of using a larger vocabulary. This is a byproduct of technology, providing an easy out when it comes to communication.
While we move toward an age that is increasingly dependent on technology, especially social media, we must realize that these things come at a cost. Dependence on these must be seriously looked at, as we are suffering the consequences.
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