Has social media damaged this generation's ability to communicate?

If we look at the current generation’s communication skills and compare it with the older generation we will see that despite the use of technology and with all the social media tools available, the overall level and standard of communication has decreased. In spite of all the ease, miscommunication and misinterpretation is at an all-time high. 

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We see that people live in one building physically, but mentally they are absent. The deficit of trust and bad relations has also widely increased. With so much information available at finger tips, it is very hard to distinguish between right and wrong. 

With decreased verbal communication and increased written communication, it is very difficult to ascertain the emotions behind what is written. Following are the reasons behind the damage caused by texting and social media to our ability to communicate face to face.

• Decreased Face to Face Interaction

Due to the widely growing popularity of social media, there has been a decrease in face to face interaction between the people. With the ever-growing usage of smartphones, a majority of the people now have access to social media. Due to this people now prefer to interact with people online rather than in person because it seems simpler and convenient this way. The ease and simplicity attract other people to use it as a mode of communication as well. This can be determined by seeing that many people have gotten into a relationship by just interacting with them on the social media and without talking to them in person. To many, this may seem to be a positive change but actually, this has reduced the amount of interaction with people in person and has made people more antisocial.

• Decreasing Quality of Communication

The widespread use of social media for communication is not the only thing that we need to worry about, decrease in the quality of communication that is being communicated through social media is also a very big problem. The nervousness that we use to face in starting a conversation with an unknown person is no longer an issue with social media. 

On the other hand, social media encourages in whatever way they can to attract more traffic (users) towards their site so they can increase their profits by increasing their revenue. The communication through social media often uses incomplete words or shortcut to a word in order to write it quickly, which has spoiled the younger generation writing capabilities. 

Furthermore, it also encourages to make more grammatical mistakes and use of slang words as compared to a face to face conversation. Previously people use to think before talking to another person but now, be it big or small, be it experienced or an inexperience individual, be it your boss or your friend constant mode of communication is being used which portrays our lack of judgment by weighing everyone in the same pot.

• Decreasing Language Skills

As highlighted earlier English is no longer the mode of conversation when conversing on social media. Roman languages and shortened word and sentences are used to communicate. Although this has provided ease in communication what we tend to forget is that this mode of communication is being used every day and every second as a result the language in which we communicate is very hard to avoid when we talk to someone in person. This drastically reduces the social skills required to communicate with another person. One more problem is the fact that the idea of formal communication seems to be diminishing or has struck quite a blow to it due to using inadequate and low-quality language skills.

• Decreasing Amount of Relationships

Not only the social media has decreased the quality of interaction but it has also affected the quality and quantity of relationships. Previous people use to have few friends and only one of them use to be a best friend with whom we use to share everything but now with the passage of time and increased use of social media things have changed. Now everyone in our contact list is our friend. Things that were previously shared by few are now shared with many. Everyone thinks that they are a friend but at the same time they are not. The quality of the relationship can be seen by the fact that one day someone is our best friend and the other day he is our worse enemy. The consistency in relationships has been lost as a result.

Although social media has many benefits but one thing that we do understand that even with all its usefulness the quantity of communication has increased but at the cost of its quality. With social media things are portrayed differently which has nothing to do with reality.