Communicating the Social Way – Redefined:

Move around a coffee shop, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find people who don’t have their heads down using their cell phones to text, Tweet, or update their Facebook statuses—all while sharing a coffee with others at their table. Social media’s effect on our ability to interact and communicate is visible throughout all areas of society, so what does this mean for interpersonal communication?

Personal interaction is and has always been an important function of the human experience. Prior to the technological revolution and creation of personal computers and cell phones, relationships were typically developed and maintained by means of face-to-face interaction and verbal or written communication. Social media certainly affects how we engage with one another across ages. There has been a paradigm shift in the way we communicate; “We’d rather e-mail than meet; we’d rather text than talk on the phone. While emails and text messaging are a very convenient way to communicate, we are losing the personal touch as it relates to human interaction. Emails lack emotion and therefore can often be misinterpreted. Text messages resort to acronyms to avoid losing precious space in the limited character box. With technology, anyone can hide behind the text, the e-mail, the Facebook post or the tweet, projecting any image they want and create an illusion of their choice. They can be whoever they want to be.

Everyone is losing the personal touch that they use to get when having a face-to-face conversation. Studies show that only 7% of communication is based on the written or verbal word. A whopping 93% is based on nonverbal body language. Every relevant metric shows that we are interacting at breakneck speed and frequency through social media. But are we really communicating? 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 accurate representations of the truth.

Indeed, it’s only when we can hear a tone of voice or look into someone’s eyes that we’re able to know when “I’m fine” doesn't mean they’re fine at all…or when “I’m in” doesn't mean they’re bought in at all. With all the powerful social technologies at our fingertips, we are more connected – and potentially more disconnected – than ever before.