Technology: The Destruction of Communication
Technology is a wonderful thing. It has made our lives easier and makes connecting with people on opposite ends of the world a reality. But it has also seriously damaged society’s communication skills as a whole. Between the easy access to the internet and cell phones we have forgotten how to really speak to people. On a campus which has its own computer store that sells every type of PC and Mac available, the sight of laptops in class is not very uncommon, but it’s what people are doing on these laptops that is so disturbing.
Facebook. Everybody knows what it is and almost everybody has one. It’s rare to meet someone who doesn’t have one and somehow has survived college life. Even during orientation the summer before starting my freshman year here at UCF, we were told,
“If you don’t have one, get one.”
I mean, if I look around a lecture hall filled with 400 students I can guarantee that at least half of them are on Facebook either on a lap top or a cell phone. In the middle of class!!!! I mean I can understand checking it every once in a while, but certainly not in the middle of class. I usually try to pay attention in Chemistry. I just feel like society is now more concerned with the brand new bumper sticker our best friend sent us on Facebook than our actual education which is kind of disturbing. Think about it.
How do these people actually pass their classes? Chemistry is hard enough to learn with the teacher lecturing for an hour twice a week. Even with thorough note taking homework can take up to 4 hours to complete if I want to get above a 90%. And most of the kids are on a Pre-Med track, meaning anything below a 3.9 is really not an acceptable GPA. To their credit the students seem to be managing to pass somehow even with the distraction. And that’s not the only way Facebook has managed to seep into our daily lives.
Walking around this massive campus which boasts over 50,000 students, you might happen to run into a friend or ex room mate you haven’t seen in a while. You stop and chat, ask the usual questions, “How are classes? Do you like the new apartment?” and then instead of saying call me or text me and we can do dinner soon it’s “Facebook me we should totally get together soon.”
Other than the obvious use as a social networking site, it has also become an event planner. My whole life is on Facebook. It has almost completely obliterated the idea of a formal invitation sent through the mail. Now all we have to do is create an event and send an invitation to our friends online. It even reminds me when these events are coming up. No more excited phone calls between girlfriends to set up a date night for the girls, all I have to do is send them a notice on Facebook and by the end of the day the entire night is planned out and I can know exactly who is coming. It has created an easy way to organize a mass amount of people with just a few clicks on a mouse. And while I can concede that it has made keeping in touch with people easier, especially since we all went away to college, I feel like we have lost the personal touches that society once held so dear.
I remember when I would have to spend hours, hand writing thank you notes for present and things like that. Now all I have to do is go on Facebook and send something through my inbox. Birthdays are another thing. Facebook automatically tells me when one of my friend’s birthday is coming up. To me if you consider this person a friend you should know simple things like his or her birthday with out having a website send you a reminder.
Communication has all been seriously degraded. We all have at least one of those friends that we can talk to for hours on line, but as soon as we meet them in person, we freeze up. We don’t know how to talk to them face to face. It’s like the only way we know how to having a working relationship with this person is behind a computer screen.
Cell phones are another thing that has managed to slowly eat away at our verbal communication skills. We don’t call any body anymore, we text them. I’m pretty sure other than my technologically decrepit father, everybody I know has a cell phone, and most if not all have unlimited texting as an option on their phone plan. I personally can safely say that 5,000 texts a month is not unusual and one of my best friends can lay claim to just over 10,000 in one month. If my mother could text I would never actually have a reason to call her.
Just walking around campus, 90% of the people are on theirs phones and at least 80% of those are responding to a text or just sending one to a friend. Remember those annoying chain letters for email? We now have those for text messages. Although some of those tend to be useful. I remember receiving a text last semester from a couple of my friends that claimed that the police were asking women to stay away from Walmart that night because there was supposed to be a gang initiation. So it’s not all bad per-say, but there are those friends, just like Facebook, who we can talk to constantly via text message but meeting face to face just seems to be a problem for most.
So while technology has admittedly made our lives easier, it has also seemed to thrown our communication skills out the window. Between the constant text messaging and the all consuming force the is Facebook the personal touch that society seemed to so ardently engrave into the minds of previous generations has been lost on ours.
