just say it to their face

With all the brilliant technology in our world today, I would think that communication would be better.

In many ways it is: people are interconnecting on a global scale, messages can be sent to mass groups of people at a time, and lots of people carry small, hand held devices so that they can communication with just a couple clicks.

Unfortunately, technology has also blinded us. As we get excited with our cool, little gadgets, we also get carried away with them and before long have made everything much more complicated than it needs to be.

Take for example email. These days everyone loves email- it’s quick, easy, and can be sent to multiple people at a time. Not mention, you can check it when you want to, take your sweet time answering messages, and have time to think about what you’re saying before you write it out and click send. Hmmmm is there a bit of a problem here? First off, when people write in emails, they don’t always realize how they are coming across. Second, the sense of urgency that an email is sent with isn’t always tranferred over to the reciever. And thirdly, it’s actually rather time consuming to write it all out and then email back and forth, back and forth to settle a manner. I love email but it is definitely not the best way to communicate.

Texting! What teenager doesn’t love to text? What person with texting on their phone doesn’t love to text? It’s great… if I’m arranging to meet up with somebody I can send a quick message to confirm, no sweat. Or, I could send text my friends about how bored I am and then have various pointless and very distracting text conversations throughout the rest of the day. Again, I like texting, but how necessary is it really?

Facebook…. Must I even explain? As a student in high school right now, I must admit that I think facebook is kind of necessary. I find it extremely useful for trying to organize events, projects, or get-togethers. On the flip side, it’s a useful tool for keeping up with various happenings around the school and community. If I didn’t have facebook, I think I would be very confused. Of course, facebook can be nauseatingly addictive for some people which in turn, results in a bunch of people being supper annoyed with dumb statuses, lame pictures, and ridiculous games. Add all the time you’ve ever spent on facebook all together… Now think about all the other things you could have done with that time. Not to depress you, but please do realize what a black hole facebook can become.

Face to face conversation will always trump any other communication. It’s simple, fast, there’s body language (90% of communication), facial expression, tone, and no one (unless they’re really rude, I suppose) is going to turn their back on you and walk away to deal with it later. Communication is always best when in person and the closer you can’t get to that, the better. Hence, talking on the phone isn’t terrible, but email is quite a few steps lower.

So we advance as a society. We make more fancy gadgets. We form connections all over the place. And we talk lots. But just because we can get in contact with people, are we still communicating?