Impact Of The Internet On The Communication

The internet is truly an amazing phenomenon to grasp. Having the ability and option to connect with people across the world in real-time was deemed impossible 20 years ago. It’s a shame that this great discovery has disconnected us. This is reality. The internet has provided the entire globe with new opportunities, content, and ways to connect. Due to this, the huge wave of this social media era has entirely changed the way we communicate and do business both on and off the web.

We are overfilled with countless networking groups, meetings, and events specifically for certain industries along with social media sites such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, etc. It has gotten to the point where there is a website where a format of speed dating occurs but occurs online instead. According to statista.com, the number of social network users worldwide is expected to be approaching 2.96 billion people, roughly a third of the population of the entire Earth.

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This figure is anticipated to continue growing as less developed countries and communities gain access to the internet.

The way we connect around the globe is continuously growing. However, there is a growing parallel in disconnection. Sherry Turkle, Ph.D., who is a social psychologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claims that our unrestricted ability to access the digital world is the leading cause of isolation. She says people are “more lonely and distant from one another ... this is not only changing the way we interact online, but it’s also straining our personal relationships, as well.

” (Price, 2011). Our unlimited want of social interaction is harming our ability to convey time and emotion into our offline relationships.

An extreme abundance of social media is directly affecting our emotional and mental state, thus indirectly disconnecting us further from our personal relationships. Professor Dr. Hanna Krasnova at the University of Potsdam along with a party of researchers derived from two universities in Germany studied the impact of emotion and envy on popular social media sites, Facebook. The study concluded that one in three people had left Facebook feeling worse than when they first viewed it. Those, identified as ‘Lurkers,’ were specifically upset and left with a feeling of disappointment because they visited Facebook to look at everyone else’s content, without posting anything themselves. Leading to them isolating themselves with feelings of loneliness, anger, and frustration. (Krasnova, 2013). These empty and negative feelings indirectly harmed their personal relationships. While seemingly being more connected by viewing people’s content, they were disconnected and not engaged with relationships offline. FOMO is a term defined in the Oxford Dictionary as ‘anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere, often aroused by posts seen on social media. These people are more concerned with events happening that they aren’t a part of rather than paying attention to what’s around them.

The internet encourages communication in a one-way environment with status updates and a deluge of personal information being overshared. We are so addicted to the internet that our conversations in real life tend to be brief and to the moment. While in a restaurant, bus, café, or anywhere out in public, a glance at the people around you will provide you with evidence of how we are addicted to what’s going on online in our phones more than we are to the people surrounding us. This is especially apparent amongst babies and children who are taken care of and remain calm by watching their favorite cartoon on their iPad.

All hope is not lost. We can help deter this disconnection between us by finding alternatives for two-way conversations and connections instead of the typical one-way spew as it currently is for the most part. We should indulge ourselves in conversations without restraint on the magnitude of the conversation. We should adapt and allow it to be socially acceptable to provide our own insight on different and broader points of view. It is up to you to pave the way for others. You should engage yourself in two-way conversations, exporting and importing thoughts and insight. It is your job to invest in the quality of the relationship and conversations. You have the ability to make each conversation and engagement feel more than a “like” by allowing every single connection to matter.