Technological advancement and globalization has created a need for technology, such as
social media, to provide fast and easy communication even between people in long distances.
With social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and email, among others,
friends and family can communicate via text messages, voice calls, and video calls as well as
know what a loved one is doing by viewing posts. However, over time social media has
developed a different face with criticism that this technology has been sabotaging
communication by diminishing the need for face-to-face interactions in society and creating a
wide communication margin.
Social media has damaged communication by diminishing the value of face-to-face and
voice-to-voice interactions. Some may argue that social media was invented to reduce the broad
margin in communication by giving the society an easier way of talking to friends and loved
ones. Social media has made us less social by providing room for fake communication where
individuals can relay the opposite of what they are feeling. An article in Forbes magazine gave a
personal example where a mother exchanges text messages with her daughter who only texted
happy thoughts accompanied by smiling emoticons (Tardanico, par 2). With such messages, the
mother pictured her daughter as a happy college girl doing great away from home. However, on
the same evening, the daughter attempted to kill herself. On further investigation, the mother was
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told her daughter showed signs of depression while at college by locking herself up in her room
and crying. Social media deprives the society of authentic communication by making it easy for
people to write and post good things to give the impression of a good and stable life when they
are going through turbulent times.
Business communication has also been negatively affected by social media by creating a
wide margin in workplaces. Most companies have an automated reply system where customers
and clients are replied with messages that tend to lack full information and emotions (Baruah, 9).
Such messages may save on time but create a communication gap by making customers feel that
that companies do not care about customers. Most people are annoyed by receiving automated
texts from companies and even families. This use of social media in return creates a wide
communication gap where organizations have a fake relationship where people would rather
depend on a tone portrayed via an email, blog, or message. With such little information provided
through social media, it is easy for individuals to get mad if a message is written in capital letters
or shy away from a business deal if a message ends with a smiling emoji. Social media creates a
communication margin in workplaces where people hardly understand nor know each other.
Social media ruins communication by eliminating the chance of reading an individual’s
body language face-to-face and creating room for other people’s imagination to fill in the gaps
created when little information is provided over social media. Communication over social media
platforms is rarely authentic because some individuals provide false information and mood to
make friends and loved ones believe they are happy. Social media has also created a wide
communication margin, mostly in workplaces, by most employees depending on electronic
communication rather than having physical meetings and chats. Social media is sabotaging
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communication and a lack of proper measures and solutions may turn our society into robots
who can hardly read and understand each other.
Works Cited
Baruah, Trisha Dowerah. "Effectiveness of Social Media as a tool of communication and its
potential for technology enabled connections: A micro-level study." International
Journal of Scientific and Research Publications 2.5 (2012): 1-10.
Tardanico, Susan. "Is social media sabotaging real communication?." Forbes. Retrieved