I thought the Quality of Online Relationships article was not only interesting
for an article written 12 years ago, but extremely relevant in today's
world. Years ago, online relationships
and social media were not even possible, but are a main component in how we
currently communicate with friends, family members and at the work place. The article stated that e-mail was the most used
electronic asset for communicating in the work place and by students and I
think the numbers reported in the article are far below the statistics that
would be reported today. Although e-mail
is useful in exchanging work-related information, I agree with the article's statistics
that it would be less useful than other means of communication such as face-to-face
or phone communication for personal relationships. E-mail lacks that human interaction that I
feel is extremely important in communication.
For example, with on the phone or face-to-face conversation, changes in
tone or pitch can be heard and body language can be evaluated. With e-mails, a person doesn't get to see
what is and isn't emphasized in terms of importance because the message is just
being interpreted by reading text.
I also
wasn't shocked to hear that relationships sustained primarily over the Internet
are not as close as those sustained by other means of communication such as
face-to-face or over the phone. Although,
I think these statistics would be drastically different today with social media
and communicating sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Skype. These sites have pretty much set up
face-to-face interaction over the internet and have improved our nations means
of communication. It's both exciting and
scary to see how far technology has come over the last 12 years since this
article was written. It seems like the
majority of our country depends heavily upon social media for their means of communication
which I don't necessarily believe is a good thing. I still believe that nothing beats
face-to-face communication when trying to maintain a relationship, but the
internet and social media sites have done a good job to shorten the gap.
Nice analysis SCbaseball. I thought the article also presented some interesting results that are relevant to the world today. I think email has taken the place of the written letter today and is often used for more formal writing than it was originally intended for due to the emergence of text messaging and twitter, which are often used for quick and easy communication. Skype and other face-to-face interactions over the internet have definitely revolutionized communication in an internet setting because they are better than a phone call and not far behind an actual in person meeting. However, I feel as users of the new applications we must be careful to use them as a supplement rather than a substitute for the real thing.
ReplyDeleteI agree with many of your points SCbaseball. There really is no substitute for face-to-face communication for any meaningful relationship, whether it is work or friendship. I do see the usefulness of email in some contexts, such as when all you really need is just cut and dry information or a person might need a little time to respond. I think you made a good point about body language when it comes to face-to-face communication too; I talked about tone and facial expressions in my post, but I forgot how telling a person’s body language can be.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with your observation of how rapidly people’s communication channels have changed and how that’s scary and exciting. As a person who isn’t doesn’t really use Skype or Twitter and such, I feel like I am lagging behind! Everything’s so instantaneous now, and everyone has so much to say at the same time (maybe too much! I feel like all this social media can get a bit of trivial sometimes.)