Everyone Is Talking, and No One Is Listening
Since the middle of the 1990s, the ability to communicate electronically has expanded dramatically. Electronic communication is changing how people relate to one another. However, one thing remains constant: these new forms of communication are not face to face. They are distant, and they keep people at a distance. In my opinion, due to electronic communication, relationships today are changing for the worse; they have become fragmented, superficial, and anonymous.
Communication these days is becoming a process of exchanging messages of two or three words. There is no longer time for serious and deep reflection. For example, in most countries, sending a text message via a cell phone is much cheaper than talking on that phone, so people send each other silly messages like “RU ready?” or “4 sure. ” The language of Shakespeare and Milton has become reduced to abbreviations. With Instant Messenger(IM), people send each other emoticons such as a smiley face instead of sentences. In addition, since Instant Messenger depends on who has the fastest connection, there cannot be real communication. There is no give-and-take. These fragmented messages are not true communication.
The current ability to relate to one another electronically is largely textual; that is, people read messages from each other. Blogs, or Web logs, have become the way to communicate. However, anyone, anywhere can create a blog, and they can write anything they want. There are millions of blogs being produced. It seems that everyone wants to shout, “Hey, here I am ! This is me!”, but no one really listens. No one responds. Another reason why relationships are becoming more superficial is the spread of e-mail. Because they are overwhelmed by spam in addition to real messages, people just skim what they see and either make a rapid, thoughtless response or ignore it completely. No one reads e-mail messages carefully because there are just too many of them.
Finally, while one great advantage of the World Wide Web is that it is anonymous, this is also its major disadvantage. Anyone can pretend to be anyone. For example, a sixteen-year-old high school student could say that he is a twenty-three-year-old college graduate, and the person reading his blog or profile would never know. This type of anonymity can also put internet users at risk. There are many news stories about a criminal convincing a teenager to meet him at a coffee shop or a mall. The teenager agrees to meet her internet friend because she thinks she is meeting another teenager. The Web knows no one; a person can invent an identity. It’s clear that there can be no real communication when it’s so easy for someone to remain anonymous.
In short, electronic communication has multiple advantages, but it also has disadvantages. This new form of communication makes people lonelier because they don’t make real and meaningful connections. The communication is fragmented and superficial, and it is not always honest because of the ability to be anonymous. Fewer silly messages and more face-to-face communication would make us better people, I think..
