Victoria Esparza
Professor Mullen
English
Lost Signal In our social media outlets there have been vast technological changes in the past 20 years which have brought about social media to enhance communication. Social media has grown to share photographs of daily activities, your own personal thoughts and even sharing personal political stances on current events. Such a constant social dependency on these outlets such as Facebook, twitter and other media sources have begun to degrade actual face to face activity between people. This negatively hindering individuals on several factors of our daily lives. Such as the ability to effectively communicate with another. As well as not focusing on their physical surroundings. People need to begin to regulate their use of these social sources in their day to day lives. Communicating with one another is one the the most important aspects of our lives whether at a job interview or simply asking a classmate for notes on a missed lecture. We all encounter such situations where knowing how to effectively interact with another is extremely important. A survey that was done by the social site known as Badoo found that 39% of Americans spend more time socializing online than in actual person. Even more startling was the fact that they found 20% of these people actually prefer to communicate online or via text message. Some may use the excuse that such interactions are much more "convinent" to them with jobs and school duties of course shooting a quick message or updating your feed may be "easier". But when did it become so hard to merely have an actual face to face conversation. In the ted talk discussion given by Sherry Turkle, she discusses the effect of these media sources and how people have begun to use these cyber worlds to actually create an"illusion of companionship" as she states. People have lost their sense of intimacy solely relying on the brief high of a like or new message on Facebook. As according to the media theorist, Douglas Rushkoff's book, Program or be Programmed, 55 percent of a conversation relies on body movements, all of which are lost through our communication on the internet. People have also begun to lose sight of really living in "the now." The next time your out at a public park really observe the individuals around you. You may see a parent instead of playing with their kids they might be sitting on the sidelines checking their media feeds on their cell phones. Or even at the next social event you might attend notice how people might become so consumed with taking pictures and constantly updating their facebook,twitters or even just trying to get the perfect filter for that Instagram picture. This causing the individual to miss out on the actual moment and experiences they are physically living and taking part in. Just as Sherry Turkle discuses in her talk as people are beginning to "Bail out of the real" and quickly becoming a "culture of distraction". (Turkle) This type of distraction can be most prominently seen in the increasing occurrence of car accidents due to drivers constantly texting and checking their social sites through their phones while driving. This multi living clearly not just effecting people socially but even their own livelihood. In order