Are things like Twitter, Texting, Facebook and Blogging hurting communication?

That is the question that I have been asking myself lately.  For people under a certain age, we are growing up with technology.  I'm 32 and didn't have access to the Internet until I went to college.  I didn't have a phone that texted until I was 30 (and didn't even text much until I was 31) and didn't start blogging or using twitter until I was 32.  People younger than me are growing up with it in middle school!  I am not someone who is opposed to technology and thinks it is all evil and kids are dumber because of it.  I mean, I love technology (the iPod has been one of the greatest inventions ever!) and I am by no means saying we are worse off than before.  What I am concerned about is the human-to-human interaction that we seem to be losing because of the increased use of technology.  I almost feel like we are moving towards a Johnny Mnemonic type of life (or for your RPG people, Shadowrun) where we start becoming part computer/part human.

Blogging is a great example.  While blogging itself is quite harmless, the comments on blogs or videos posted on youtube, etc. can become a diatribe of name-calling idiocy.  Everyone knows what I am talking about here.  You can go to any political article or blog and you will find under the comments section (if it is open and not monitored) comments to people that would never be said in a face-to-face conversation.  The reason for this is simply the fact that we have lost the human interaction of communication.  When people put things on-line they don't put as much thought into the process and put up something that is either degrading to the author of the blog or another commenter.  

This problem goes beyond comments on blogs though.  When people send e-mails and texts, they don't put as much thought into the process (in fact, gmail now has an option that you can cancel your sent message after a few seconds if you 'accidentally' hit the send button) and end up sending something that they regret later.  There is also the issue of context.  When you talk to someone face to face, you can read their body language and voice to see if they are serious or joking.  In an e-mail or text, that is very hard to do.  A lot of research has shown that the majority of our communication is actually non-verbal (body language, gestures, voice characteristics, etc) and we don't get that over e-mail and text.

While there are other problems, there is an easy solution: make communication more human.  Think about what you are going to say when you type up an e-mail or a text.  Think about what comments you are putting down on someones blog.  Try to meet with people and talk with them and listen to them (listening is another problem all together).  Try to make communication more human.

Travis

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