Facebook and Other Social Netwokring on Communication Skills

     As technology has continued to improve at an exponential rate, the internet has become a tool that no one can go without. Much of this increase in time spent online can be accounted to social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. These sites have become so trafficked that they have had a profound impact on the communication skills of our nation's youth. Teens who use these websites extensively lose their ability to communicate at the same level as teens of past generations.
     It was only four years ago that Facebook finally decided to completely open its doors to everyone who was in, or has passed, high school, where previously there had been a more strict age requirement. With this change, the status symbol of pre-teens graduating from middle school and entering high school became their Facebook accounts. After four short years, of completely opening up their system, Facebook has become the most visited website, falling short only of Google. After "an increase of a whopping 82% over [the last year]," (Scott) Facebook users in the US now log over 1 billion hours on the site per year. Such a dramatic increase is not solely a product of kids taking time away from homework, the use of Facebook has branched out to now interfere with time that could be spent in face to face communication.
     Many proponents of the online social networking websites would suggest that because of the increased time spent on these websites, and subsequently the increased amount of communication, the community has overall improved its skills and quality of communication. Referencing the line "practice makes perfect," they state that their increased communication has given them more time to develop their skills and are therefore better at communication. This is a blatantly incorrect analysis. Though the quote used is a perfect analogy to the situation at hand, the group of extensive users is in no way increasing their communication skills. The quality of conversation of these websites is so diminished that the extended amount of time spent is in fact retracting from the skills of these kids. This is parallel to a soccer play sitting on a park bench, kicking a ball between his feet. Sure he is practicing soccer, in the sense that he is moving the ball with his feet. However, no sensible person would argue that he is better off continuing his current drill, rather than playing in a game to improve his skills.
     This past argument is agreed upon by everyone. The confrontation really lies in the use of "diminished" in the past statement. Is the communication going on online really of a lesser quality and necessitating a lesser skill set then offline communication? This is what is at the heart of the debate.
     In defining communication, there are a few factors that need consideration. First, one needs to analyze body language. How a person carries themselves during conversation. Second is the use of correct grammar and proper diction. Whether or not the speaker chooses words that correctly exemplify the meaning they want to get across, and whether or not grammatical rules are followed. The third factor going into communication is the speed of the conversation. When in a discussion or talk, participants only have at most one second to respond to what was previously said with a well thought out response. The final facet of good communication, and arguably one of the most difficult parts to master, is the ability to carry a conversation, and to cultivate meaningful topics of discussion. These are the elements that go into determining the quality of communication. As teenagers spend more of their time behind the computer screen instead of face to face with their peers, all of these skills will be negatively impacted.
     When talking in person, all participants must show proper body language. This includes looking others in the eyes, sitting up straight, not getting distracted, and maintaining positive and engaged facial expressions. These are the types of things that parents reprimand children for when they are younger, and it is during teenage years, that these skills are solidified. This is a clear cut example of how Facebook negatively affects these teenagers. Facebook's wall posts, and IM client do not require any sort of visual interaction between any of the participants. This gives all participants free reign to look and act however they please, and to never practice any of the proper body language techniques. As a result, kids now are much less adept at conversation mannerisms which to parents who were taught these mannerisms as children, see it as a sign of disrespect rather than a lack of knowledge on the part of the teens. This has caused a social gap to appear between those who have had access to these new technologies as teenagers, and those who have not.
     People who disagree with this analysis of the situation at hand argue that although it is true that teens are less adept at face to face conversational mannerisms, it no longer matters. As life is driven into the twentieth century, the new explosion of technology and 24/7 connectivity to the rest of the world has given everyone more time to communicate behind the screen of their respective technological devices than would be possible with solely in person interaction. Now that we have removed the necessity for face to face interactions, there is no reason why body language should remain an intrinsic value in our society.
     Although it is true that these devices have removed most of the necessity for in person interactions, this is no reason to completely disregard them, and to subsequently ignore body language in these types of meetings. Humans need social interactions to survive, and many will go insane without it. A completely online lifestyle does not fulfill this need of human interaction for most people. Another point to the contrary of the opposing sides statement is that there is still a great deal of face to face interactions that go on daily, that currently could not be replaced with technological devices. Therefore we cannot replace or disregard the value of body language in our culture.
     A seemingly less pressing issue than the previous example, diction and grammar have always been a shortcoming of the teenage population. However, there is still an undoubted decrease in correct word choice and language usage. Most people type less than half as fast as they can talk, and now that many teens do the bulk of their communication online, one would ponder how they make up for all of the lost speed of conversation. Kids of this generation have attempted to make up for this lost time by cutting corners in the grammatical correctness of their conversations. They have utilized newer, more creative ways of shortening words, phrases, and sentences. With the ever-growing dictionary of abbreviations, the teenage population is slowly degrading communication all throughout America. Not only is has the teenage community ostracized itself by coming up with such slang, but still within the general teenage population, there are more condensed groups and cliques that use and even more specific set of lingo dedicated to their group. This is yet another case where "practice makes perfect" comes into play, but here, sadly, the result is anything but perfect. These teens who's original intent was to shorten the amount of typing necessary, as to encourage speedier online conversations, ended up using their own terminology so much that it has become engrained in their brains and now comes out repeatedly in face to face conversations. It is this usage in daily in person discussions that proves the negative effect Facebook and other such websites have on grammar and diction.
     On the opposite side of the argument is the idea that this radical change in diction and grammar should not be looked upon as a disrespect for the English language, but rather, as a step in the evolution of our language into a newer form of communication. These people make claims that it is to the likeness of looking back on dialogues from the 1600s and seeing how much communication has changed today. Language has always evolved, it is a part of the natural way of life, and those for this argument agree that this is only another small step towards yet another drastic change in modern language.
     I will concede that you can relate this change in modern day language to that of the change from Shakespearean times English to the present day language. However, there exists a large difference in these otherwise parallel comparisons. The vast changes from the 1600s took place over a span of four hundred years, while this current language revolution has come upon us in less than two decades! Evolution, whether it be of language or of living organisms, has been shown to take place over vast periods of time, greater than any humans lifespan. So the claims made about this change in language being another step in evolution are purely fallacy. These changes in teenage communication are no more the product of language evolution then they are of nuclear radiation to the brains of teens.
     In an interview with Mark Wang, during his dissection of online social networking's effects on present day communication skills in teenagers, he stated that these websites were causing a great "lack of face to face conversation" which was giving these teens and unfair disadvantage against those in previous generations. He specifically cited that this lack of real world communication led to an "unrealistic amount of time to think for a conversation." This is a very valid observation. Online, it is not expected that teenagers reply in a conversation very fast. Many will take great deals of time, crafting their responses ever so carefully, to send just the meaning they want. This buffer time, available to revise and edit all of your dialogs before they are sent, is not available in face to face conversations. Once you say a word, you cannot magically erase it from being heard. And likewise, you don't have this open ended amount of time to think of the best way to phrase something. This intense change from online to offline communication has slowly worn away at teenagers ability to respond in a timely manner in real life conversations. Instead, taking more of their time to think of a fairly simple response that should have been recited on impulse.
     Opponents to this idea will argue that this is not a valid point because conversations online are of a completely different nature than those that go on offline. Conversations online largely revolve around gossip and other such topics, while offline there are much more in depth conversations.
     This alone is a separate topic of discussion, however, this claim is still false. Habits are formed by repetitive actions, and it is undeniable that these teenagers are repeatedly taking their time to respond to their friends and families electronic messages. Whether or not the type of communication is different, the brain is associating conversations with this atypically large amount of time in which it has to think of an answer. It is this that carries over into face to face conversations. Another flaw in their counter-argument is that if offline conversations were mostly more in depth, and online conversations were just about gossip, then it theoretically would be easier to be involved in a conversation online than offline. Therefore teens should not have a problem with keeping up with offline conversations, however, this is not true.
     On the separate issue of what is being conversed about, there is the question of what the vast majority of conversations online revolve around, and whether or not that has impacted teenager's ability to come up with meaningful topics conversations. Most of online communication that goes through social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace can be generalized to forms of gossip. Just the spreading of information about who did what in school today, and other such topics. This in the writing community as well as in conversation, is not looked upon as meaningful topics of conversation. Topics that are given merit in conversation and writing are new advancements in technology, world politics, and other more cultured areas of discussion. Now that teens are spending such a great deal of time online, there are getting less and less exposure to these meaningful topics of discussion. Which translates to an inability to continue a conversation when talking about non-gossip in real life situations. Teenagers are finding it progressively more difficult to have full out conversations with peers and adults alike, that do not touch on gossip.
     A completely separate facet to this entire debate then the act of communication itself, is the idea that multitasking is encouraged by social networking websites and has a proven negative effect on one's ability to perform seemingly simple tasks at the same level of quality as if they had not been multitasking. Facebook has one of the most highly used internet messaging systems in the world. Whenever you are signed on to Facebook, you can immediately see which of your friends are online, and which are not. Those that are online, you can chat to in real time. This chat system differs from real life by allowing you to open up as many conversations as you want to concurrently. And you can do all of this while still browsing the rest of Facebook. The ability to run all of these tasks at once from one website has led to intense multitasking in the everyday lives of teenagers. The idea that multitasking is not good for your ability to accomplish tasks is not a revolutionary concept, it has been around for decades, however, this new online revolution is pushing the envelope to never before seen limits. Kids are now trying to focus on three conversations, looking at pictures of their friends, watching TV, and all while trying to complete their homework assignments. These new levels of multitasking encouraged by these online social platforms has had detrimental effects to teenagers ability to efficiently focus on one task, and to complete any task with as high a quality job as if they had not been prone to multitasking.
     Those on the opposing side of this argument do concede that multitasking is encouraged by these social platforms, and that multitasking has proven detriments to it. However, they argue that these deficits are vastly covered by the platforms ability to connect you with people whom you wouldn't have ever been able to connect with before. This added layer of connect-ability has essentially re-written the six degrees of separation rule. Now everyone, in fact, is one Google, Facebook, or Twitter search away from any other person in the world. This new and unusual ability to be connected to any person in the world is a more than worthy trade off for increased multitasking, and secondarily, lowered performance on everyday activities.
     This is a incorrect evaluation of the capabilities that online social networks have provided. Worldwide connect ability and multitasking do not necessarily depend on each other, nor are they mutually exclusive. They can both exist in their more useful state at the same time, which would be the best case scenario. Giving people the ability to connect with anyone on Earth at just the click of a button, while not distracting people and making it harder to perform quality work because of the burdens of multitasking.
     The positives of online social networking are indisputable. It provides a tool for massive social interaction between many people that you would otherwise not know of or be friendly with. It plays host to some of the most helpful collaboration and planning tools available. It also is great of its organization and data storage. However, with its positives, come many negative repercussions in the way of reduced communication abilities. People using online social networking lose some of their good body language, proper diction and grammar, ability to respond in a timely manner, and some of their ability to come up with meaningful topics of conversation. Teens who use these websites extensively lose their ability to communicate at the same level as teens of past generations.

Citations:

1. Scott, Greg. "Survey Says: Global Time Spent on Social Media Surges." Web log post. Drop Ship Access. 25 Mar. 2010. Web. 5 Apr. 2010. .
2. Wang, Mark. "Social Networking Impact." E-mail interview. 7 May 2010.