Social Media and Human Communication

 

On the 21st of October 2019, Sharon Ray exchanged text messages with her daughter, a college student. They chatted back and forth, mom asking how things were going and daughter answering with positive statements followed by smiley emoticons and hearts. It was a manifestation of happiness. Later that night, her daughter attempted suicide. In the following days, it came to light that she had been holed up in her dorm room, sobbing and presenting signs of depression - a radically different version from the one that she bore in texts, Facebook posts, and tweets.

 

Good morning! I am Shreya Jain. I am going to be speaking against the topic 'Social media has improved human communication.' 

 

I will begin my argument by drawing your attention to the first example I gave you. The isolated exchange of a hundred messages is not enough to conclude that active communication has occurred. The mother could not on chatting with her daughter sense even a sliver of distress in her daughter, and by that night, the daughter committed suicide. There is no better instance to prove that social media has not improved human communication. 

 

It is not just me who says this. Statistics and behavior experts agree with me. According to Forbes, only 7% of human communication relies on written or verbal discourse. A whopping 93% of communication takes cues from nonverbal body language. Every relevant metric reveals that we are interacting at an incredible speed through social media. But are we really communicating?

 

Are we now focusing on communication quantity versus quality? Superficiality versus authenticity? In an ironic development, social media has made us less social.

 

My second argument stems from the first. It is clear that communication via social media not only increases misinterpretation but also stops the building of genuine, authentic relationships. Twenty years ago, if you wanted to go out on a date with someone, you would talk to them face to face first, but now you swipe right on Tinder based on an edited picture and fraudulent description. 

  

Let us consider the second detail solidifying the fact that social media doesn’t improve communication. A data trail is left by us when we use our favorite communication tools. Here are some unimaginable statistics for the extent of communication we engage in. In a minute, we send 16 million text messages and 156 million emails worldwide - in one minute: at a 7% communication capacity. Let's take that in for a minute.

 

Looking back at my first contention, with 93% of our communication context stripped away, we are now attempting to forge relationships and make decisions based on phrases. Abbreviations. Snippets. Emoticons. Which may or may not be realistic depictions of the truth. The average Indian spends 3 hours using social media in a day, according to the Hindu, all at 7% capacity. We are not communicating on social media. We are sharing oblivious, irrelevant information. 

 

So, in a nutshell, over 4.1 billion human beings are spending over 3 hours a day on social media, communicating at 7% of their natural capacity, spreading disingenuity, fostering miscommunication, and hindering relationships. And for all of these reasons, the motion must fall because social media does most definitely, not improve communication.