Preview

Is Facebook boosting or hindering communication?

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
547 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Is Facebook boosting or hindering communication?
Is Facebook boosting or hindering communication?

Facebook is the most famous commonly used social media. It has become the preferred method for keeping in touch with people. Almost every young person has at least one Facebook account. However useful it might be in social life and education, Facebook brought about a set of new barriers and threats in these areas.

There is an irony in the sense that social media, like Facebook, has the ability to make us less social. Doubtless it may be stimulating to feel so connected with others, and yet there is no way to deny that underneath this feeling, there is a sense of emptiness. Robin Sharma agrees with that fact in his book The Greatness Guide by saying that the more we are electronically connected, the more we are emotionally disconnected. In other words, while people spend many hours of their days on Facebook chatting, posting status and wishing happy birthdays and engagements to one another, they forget about the importance of conversation in the traditional way. They completely forget about the effectiveness of sitting to dinner with the family or hanging out with friends. In a word, Facebook is gradually robbing people of what distinguishes them as human beings.

Not only does Facebook make us less social, but also sometimes conveys a completely different reality about its users. Anyone can hide behind Facebook posts, giving any image they want about themselves and creating an illusion about their personality. They can be whoever they want, depending on the fact that their audiences have no choice but to be confused, having no verbal communication. So, our only real method of communication is through voice-to-voice or face-to-face communication. It is only through this way that when one hears a tone of voice or looks into someone's eyes, they are able to know when "I am okay" does not mean they are okay at all. Thus, without any means of communication but phrases, abbreviations, snippets and emoticons on

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    One major change that has occurred within the last fifty years is the uprising popularity of social media. Many people have accounts on Facebook and can communicate with people all over the world easily. While this is great for those who wish to keep in contact with friends, family, old classmates, etc. it has been shown that Facebook has been one of the leading causes of…

    • 977 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Generation Why Analysis

    • 381 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Rather than enhancing well-being…it may undermine it” (729). We constantly refreshing the Facebook feed to see the latest status and events of our friends. When we see there is an event that our friends hanging out with each other, we felt left out and lonely. When we post a picture, we want more like to perceive popularity. As we see friends’ pictures of “the vision of good life” (648), we compared ourselves and felt bad. Although Facebook helps everyone to connect with people and share information (650), the quality of social connection that we needed is undermined. We should have more direct social interaction to fill our life with truly jolly and true-friendly, instead of with “falsely jolly, fake-friendly…” (652) online. The emotions associated with Facebook may be the only way distinguish a “person” and the “database”…

    • 381 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    My suggested title for the piece would be “Loneliness in the Age of Facebook” but that’s just me. I want to quote from the piece and offer some comments, but first, here’s my attempt at a distillation of relevant points, specific to the question of whether Facebook makes us lonely. Again, there’s a ton of rich detail on the topic of loneliness in general. I’m skipping that here but encourage you to read the article.…

    • 813 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Pedestrian Analysis

    • 865 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Granted, Facebook or other social media sites are a great way to keep in touch with long distance friends or family. This can be great but should not be the sole way to interact with people. One reason as to why technology should not play a part in limiting social interaction is because it offers no face to face communication. Texts or emails cannot stand in for hearing a friend’s voice or seeing a smile in person. Little by little, the internet and mobile technology seem to be subtly destroying the meaningfulness of interactions between two people. The second way that technology ruins social interaction is by taking away the emotional aspects of communication. “LOL” or a smiley emoticon do not fully convey the actual emotion behind the response. All people have a basic need to fill social bonds and that is meaningless to do when the actual laugh or smile hides behind a screen. This is also seen in Bradbury’s novel “The Pedestrian” when everyone would just stay inside and really only experience whatever the television let them…

    • 865 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In ‘Facebook is killing communication,’ Victor Visage claims that Facebook hinders people’s ability to develop communication skills. He says this for the following reasons. It erodes face to face communication skills, it promotes poor communication and friendships, and it also leads to shallow relationships. This essay will try to show that Victor Visage is wrong because it opens up worldwide communication, it enables you to make new friends, and it allows you to build strong connections with people all across the world.…

    • 599 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Proposing a Sloution

    • 1866 Words
    • 8 Pages

    When social networking websites were created in the 20th century they were used as a way for people to “stay connected and share with friends”, and they provided others with “a place for friends”. Pre-teens and young adults were drawn to these websites and they began to use these sites to communicate with each other. As the popularity of the social networks increased so did privacy issues. The online article “Why we’ll never Escape Facebook” James Cowan states, “Facebook changes privacy policies at whim, makes it difficult to control personal information and hoards users ' data.” Because of some of the recent changes in the privacy settings some of the sites users are becoming the victims of cyber bullying. Cyber bullying is affecting many school aged children and it is the responsibility of school administrators to ensure that the technology within the school is not being used for cyber bullying.…

    • 1866 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Some debate that Facebook, and other social networking sites are undermining our ability to communicate and the use of such sites dehumanise what is an important part of community life and living together. However, if anything, I believe these social networking websites allow us the opportunity to meet and form friendships with people that we may not otherwise communicate with and to create these friendships faster. They allow us to keep in contact with friends and family, whether they are in our own city or on the other side of the world, with greater ease. In today’s fast paced environment nobody has time to sit down daily and respond to individual emails; Facebook and MySpace allow us to reach all of our friends and colleagues with a simple click of a button. For the introverts among us, social networking eliminates the pressure of face to face contact and can help those shy people with the initial contact of meeting others. Facebook’s photo sharing application is rated the most used on the Internet, drawing more than twice as much traffic as the next three sites combined. These statistics show a great emphasis on the online community, especially when 14 million photos are being uploaded every day. With active users doubling every six months and more than half of active users returning daily it is clear to see people all over the world are embracing the convenience of social networking.…

    • 983 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Social networking is all the rage with society. It is a main outlet for both personal and professional networking. Whether its job related and trying to put the word out for prospective employers or just connecting with a long distance friend via instant message, there aren’t too many people who have not taken advantage of this option to connect with others. There are not many households without the technology to take advantage of this option in communication. It seems to be the main form of contact within society today. The problem with this method of communication is that it does not allow for strong face to face interaction and allows society to in a sense to hide themselves. This inherently has led to a society with lower self esteem and has put a wall up with its users lowering standards of social interaction. It has had such a negative impact and should be used with greater caution especially within the teenage and young adult generation. Such sites as Facebook, Myspace and orkut have had an extremely negative impact on society and what should be perceived as acceptable. Social Networks and the ideas and activities associated with these networks have become profoundly detrimental to society today. It has escalated into much more impressive problems such as cyber bullying, intense obsession and lessened interpersonal communication skills.…

    • 1323 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    It’s a way for college and high-school students to connect with each other and for friends to stay in touch or reconnect. This can be a very beneficial service to its members by providing these services. Facebook can also pose problems for its users. The information posted on Facebook is not very secure and could easily be accessed by individuals you don’t want searching through your private…

    • 724 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “A recent study out of Australia (where close to half the population is active on Facebook), titled “Who Uses Facebook?” found a complex and sometimes confounding relationship between loneliness and social networking. Facebook users had slightly lower levels of “social loneliness”-the sense of not feeling bonded with friends-but “significantly higher levels of family loneliness”-the sense of not feeling bonded with…

    • 1051 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    One of the new phenomenon’s of our generation is facebook, and with over four hundred million users on it, it is definitely not hard to add friends easily. However, Facebook is also an easy way to replace the outside world with spending all day surfing other peoples profiles. Facebook is a social networking website that was originally designed for college students, but is now open to anyone 13 years of age or older. Facebook users can create and customize their own profiles with photos, videos, and other information about themselves. Also, friends can browse the profiles of other friend’s pages and comment on their updated status or just write on the wall of the person. Facebook is a great website for finding old friends and connecting to new ones, however using the site too much can make people less inclined to interact face to face with other people.…

    • 757 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Because of technology becoming quite advanced at a rapid rate, there has been a vast variety of apps on the app stores for people to engage in social interactions, such as via twitter, snap chat, face book, instagram, as well as tumbler. People feel as if being a part of social networking they do not need to establish and maintain relationships with people in person. We depend so much on technology to where we freeze when it is time to interact with someone face to face without the help of a technology based app or website. Although people see all the pros and advances from technology, they look past the cons of technology that hinder people's ability to maintain an actual relationship with different people outside of technology. Majority of the people we are friends with today we have met through a social network, not only is this where we primarily meet, but this is how we socialize with each other. If technology was not so advanced and did not have numerous tools for socializing our friend list would be half of what it is now. According to "Me and My 400 friends; The Anatomy of College Students' Facebook Networks Their Communication Patterns and Well Beings", describes 'socializing" as the ability to talk to someone and friend them on social networks" (Mango). Being said, we focus our relationships with others through technology. According to the previously mentioned article, statistics show the idea behind technology is to create relationships with people without experiencing the hardest part the skill of being social (Mango). Technology has given us pathways to steer towards certain directions, however the effects technology has are not always the…

    • 1237 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Social Networks

    • 915 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Hal Niedzviecki’s essay, “Facebook in a Crowd,” emphasizes the difference between acquiring social network friends and acquiring real friends. When Niedzviecki logged on to Facebook, he realized he was close to having 700 online “friends” (958). But being that he didn’t know them personally like he knew his previous friends, he decided to have a Facebook party. After tabulating the responses, 15 people said they were attending, 60 people said maybe, a few hundred said not, and the rest ignored the invitation (958-59). However, on the day of the party one person named Paula showed up. According to him, “For chipping away at past friendships and blocking honest new efforts, you really have to blame the modern world. People want to hang out with you, I assured myself. They just don’t have the time” (Niedzviecki 960). Niedzviecki acquired 700 online friends, but spent the rest of his night drinking alone. He insists that society relies on social networks entirely too much to meet or interact with people. I agree that society is becoming too reliant on social networks to meet people because my experience on a social network confirms it.…

    • 915 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Facebook, like many other social media sites gives individuals a way to communicate with friends, family, and other individuals through the internet. Throughout the years Facebook has become a worldwide phenomenon that people have become quite obsessed with. One would think that since Facebook makes communication quicker, and easier for many people that it would make people less lonely. However, it is doing the opposite. Today, lonely people use Facebook as an outlet to run to while other things in their lives aren’t going as planned. Loneliness lies deep inside someone, and cannot be cured by “fake” communicating with an individual over Facebook. While individuals flee to Facebook to try to alleviate the pain of being lonely, it only leaves them less happy. The more these people try to be happy, the less happy they will be.…

    • 543 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    destructive media

    • 1034 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Facebook feels like a social network. But it is actually an imitation network. Being alone causes us to seek connection through whatever means necessary. With social media always at our fingertips, we can connect whenever we want (Sherry Turkle: Connected but alone?). The problem is people tend to mix up the feeling of connection they get through social media with the feeling of real physical connection. People feel that they are connecting with their friends at all times, but actually they are creating an illusion for themselves that they are not alone. In the words of Sherry Turkle "We are getting used to a new way of being alone together."(Sherry Turkle: Connected but alone?). When people are lonely, the desire to connect kicks in. Too often they reach for their social networking sites to feed that desire, instead of calling up someone to hang out (Sherry Turkle: Connected but alone?). Some people who have deleted their Facebook stated that not being able to connect through Facebook is worth not having the distance it creates between close friends (Wortham). Seeing what is going on in their friends ' lives gives them a false sense of being in their…

    • 1034 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays