Social Media Communication

The ideas shared in the CNN article by Blake Snow are similar to how I feel about Facebook. I would never delete it because it is a way to stay in touch with people, but it is becoming more and more predictable and less interesting. In the past year I have spent much less time on the site than I used to.However until a site is created that would replace it fully, there will always be a use for Facebook. Even the more recent social media platforms that have been introduced, such as Twitter and Instagram do not cover everything that Facebook has to other. 

I also agree with the New York Times article by Michiko Kakutani that says social media “generates added anxiety”; I think that some people struggle to communicate well with new people face to face if they have mainly talked to them online or over text. It creates a new sense of worry over how people will accept them in real life versus how they were viewed online. As well, the article says that online and texting communication, “[is] actually making people feel lonelier and more overwhelmed”, I agree with that idea because some people spend all of their time talking to people through technology which is not the same as actually having someone physically present to talk to.

http://www.afterelton.com/www/data/afterelton.com/sites-files/2012/05/facebook-communication.jpg

Most people these days, myself included, who are walking down the street, sitting on a train or standing in a public place will be constantly looking at their phone as a way to avoid talking or interacting with people. I always wondered if people years and years ago would have a conversation with every stranger they sat down next to, as they had no form of social media to keep them occupied. 

Personally, my experience and also my friend' is that our small talk skills are affected by how much we communicate over text. It has become more difficult to strike up conversations with people you don’t really know because you are used to talking to the same people about the same things over text or the internet. This struggle to communicate with new people most likely makes it harder than it used to be to create real-world communities, but the technologies such as Facebook have made it immensely easier to build communities with people online because you can very easily connect with people who like similar things. In the real-world it can take much more time to find people with similar interests to build a community around.