Non Verbal Communication - Are Social Networks Robbing Our Youth Of Their Ability To Communicate?

Social networks are a wonder of the century. The ability to communicate instantly with people from all over the world is simple amazing. Social networking is big business for many corporations. It gives them an opportunity to control their brand and their reputation online. Companies who use social networking have followers on many of the top social networks. Imagine that, being exposed to and having online access the thousands of customers your serve in your brick and mortar stores.

Everybody is doing it, doing what? Discovering the importance or usefulness of social networks and joining along with the rest of the world. Actors, recording artist and everyday people are following and gaining followers and friends on social networks. Online, you can be anybody and you can talk about anything. You don't have to be an expert on any subject and you don't have to know the people who follow.

Social networking is changing the way we communicate, teenagers and young adults seem to have created a new social language online. Words are replaced with initials and acronyms and no one communicates in full or half sentences. When teens are so adapt to communicating by text messages do they lose their ability to communicate effectively?

My son shared his frustration with me over the fact that many of his friends would rather text that talk. It seems to be a trend among many of the youth today. Non verbal communication, in the form of a text message is preferred over talking. Many of our youth, lack the ability to hold intelligent conversations with their peers, adults or potential employers.

There seems to be a real disconnect among those who often use social networks in much of their day to day and casual communications. Many lack the basic skills to relate, explain or convey their thoughts and feelings in people to people situation and are more comfortable with instant messaging. Much gets lost in the translation when sending instant messages. When you can interact with others and experience all the nuances involved speaking such as, the meaning of facial expressions, voice inflections and tone that comes with interacting with people. We cheat ourselves of learning how to effectively communicate with others when social networks and instant messaging are preferred over talking face to face.

In his article on featured on Mobile Crunch, Jay Donovan reported - teen females ages 13 - 17 send and receive an average of 4,050 texts per month. He also reported that in one year the percentages have increased significantly, they are higher than what he would have expected. Other surveys have found, daily internet used among smart phone users is 35% and this is full-two thirds or 66% of all smart phone usage. (J.Donovan 2010)

What does all of this mean, our teenagers and young adults are using their smart phones more to download data and to communicate with each other. For many this is the preferred method of communicating. People to people and face to face talking seems to be a thing of the past for many of our youth and the art of communicating could bring them great challenges in their future.

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