Is Social Media Killing Communication?

“Is social media killing everyday communication?”

This is what I thought when I recently made (and broke) plans to hang out with one of my friends via Twitter.  In the same amount of time that we could have simply place a phone call to one another, we instead decided to try to plan our dinner date through an online social networking site.

So, now you’re probably thinking, “What’s the big deal?”  Well, this isn’t the first time that I have used a social networking site to make plans with friends.  In fact, I am willing to admit that I, at all costs, will avoid using my cell phone except to talk to my family and boyfriend.  For everyone else (i.e. the people who I don’t usually come into regular contact with), it just seems to be more convenient to communicate online.  But this avoidance is not new; rather, it is something that has developed over time.

The Rise of the Internet; The Fall of Face-to-Face Communication

It is no secret that there is a very clear, inverse relationship between face-to-face communication versus the Internet.  Since the development and emergence of the Internet, we have seen the eruption of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook as well as more business-oriented sites such as LinkedIn.  And while all of these sites purport to increase communication and the formation of relationships, why is it then that a vast majority of us avoid using our cell phones for what they were intended for- making and receiving phone calls?

Perhaps it is just my circle of net-surfing savvy friends, but I have found that among us, we would rather send a text message, FB message, email or tweet to “chat” versus actually using a phone.  Are telephones becoming archaic? What is the fascination with online and mobile communication that keeps us tethered to our laptops and puts us into a near panic attack when our Internet connections go down?

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