From letters and telegrams 200 years ago to our endless methods of instant communication in today’s world, technology has shaped how we live in ways that makes the past methods obsolete.  Communication and connecting is as easy as ever, as previous distance or language limitations are practically archaic. You can instantly send messages to someone who lives in the next house, or in the next country with ease. It’s easier to find others with mutual interests, too. This ever-changing online community is the enabler of the evolution of communication as we know it, and this generally positive change is rewriting how we view friendships and human connection overall.

In the past, the average person was limited by how their proximity to whomever they were conversing with. When the Internet began to assert itself as the new method of communication, distance became less of an issue, allowing people to be more selective in the people with whom they choose to interact. In the article, ‘I Knew You Before I Met You’, author Jennifer Brannock Cox says, “With the advent of social media, users now have the ability to connect based on shared interests rather than proximity”. Online, they can gather and find sites in social media that caters to their passions, finding people who share interests rather than zip codes. Personally, I have met several people online through my costume-making hobby that I don’t think I could have met in real life. I had introduced several of my friends to it, but it’s rare enough that you don’t just run into someone on the street who also happens to enjoy making costumes. Online, there is an entire community spanning several social media platforms, making it easier for me to connect with those who face the same struggles as me and who I don’t necessarily need to introduce the hobby to myself.
While one may try to argue that we are interacting less with the world that is physically around us and that online connections are not real, this is not the whole story. Interpersonal relationships formed online are entirely by choice, which often make them more meaningful than offline ones, as options are much more limited in the real world.  In an article about teens’ online safety, this topic is thoroughly covered and several examples of teens making friends online where they couldn’t in real life are introduced. One story that was brought up was a teen living in Alaska who turned to the internet when the friend pool in their community seemed barren. In situations like these, the friendships that became possible through online communication don’t seem as superficial as just ‘spending all their time online’.

After all, many of us are obligated to interact with the people around us, but that doesn’t mean we want to. Due to this, the relationships formed may be more superficial, and thus weaker than those formed online.
With the introduction of social media platforms through the Internet, people can connect almost instantly with those they need to talk to. Gone are the days of waiting for a letter to be delivered, hoping that it won’t get lost or be delayed by various circumstances. We are less dependent on other people or circumstances for interaction than ever before. This is said best by Nathan Miller, who wrote, “Technology, like the internet and social media, grants a certain power to its users”, in his Op-Ed ‘Are Teens Sharing Too Much Information Online?’. This power is a subtle one, as many won’t notice the convenience that is placed in their hands. The inconvenience of being left on “read” is minimal compared to having to wait to even see if your letter has reached the recipient.

The slang used online is both similar to and vastly different than our everyday language. Kids and teens navigate the waters between everyday terminology and online vernacular rather easily, and pick up on new slang like it’s nobody’s business. Clay Shirky praises this language in ‘The Period is Pissed’, when he states, “People are communicating like they are talking, but encoding that talk in writing.” In this way, I think that online interactions strengthen communication skills in a way that verbal communication cannot. On the Internet, people have to pick up on nuances in punctuation, capitalization, and even spelling choices in order to accurately decipher the meaning of a message. This added dimension of decoding stems from the lack of nonverbal communication that goes on in a real-life conversation through body language, facial expressions, and tone. I can pick up on my friend’s mood just by if they punctuate and actually capitalize words in their texts, for example. Other times, we exploit misspelled words or incorrect punctuation to make jokes or show a joking tone. Emojis, which are literal facial expressions or symbols, help further communicate what people are saying in texts that they are sending.  This is not the deterioration of language as we know it, but the evolution of it.

Despite the bad reputation that social media has gained, it has started a massive overhaul in how we communicate, and still positively affects us as a population. The next time someone tries to argue that social media is the greatest plague of current society, ask them to consider how social media assists us in communication and linguistics, rather than focusing on selfies and hashtags.