Today’s post from a friend of mine, Muminamerc, made me think.
Social Media, once considered “cutting edge” technology , now plays an ever increasing part in our lives.
It seems a shame though that much of it is put to frivolous use.
I envy my Mum who is completely detached from it and, truth be told, doesn’t understand it.
My children use it all day long using several different platforms to chat and snap every achingly boring moment of their lives.
They have some problems that are entirely derived from using SM.
If a friend is slow to respond or like something all-out war is declared.
Texts are misread as the timing and intonation of every day speech cannot be conveyed in script.
It’s a little like rereading a paragraph in a book: it’s meaning can change with different stresses and emotions.
There’s also the matter of quality and quantity.
Like Muminamerc, my adolescent conversation was limited to what went on in the schoolyard and later to brief phone calls and chats in pubs or shouts in discos.
Today, my kids talk all the time. Conversations are so long and drawn out and, because of the anonymity of the internet, can get very fractious very fast. Emboldened by the lack of a face to talk to, words are used carelessly and feeling hurt.
A development which might put a stop to this and may actually reverse the process is video calling using apps like fac.etime and Sky.pe. I struggle a little with these mainly because I feel a bit “on the spot”. I really have to think fast to keep a conversation going, but that’s just me I suppose.
My feeling may be shared by many others because video calling is effectively free, assuming you’ve paid for and use your internet package, and yet is not yet popular. People will continue paying for phone calls despite this FREE service.
So, back to the question, is SM killing conversation.
My answer is – “It was and still is, but it needn’t.”
If I can accommodate a face to face video call, anyone can.
