Blake Lohmeier
Thursday night speech class

Social Media Dependency

Healthy effective communication without a doubt is the most important skill to get right in my opinion when it comes to anything. For a healthy relationship with a family member, friend, acquaintance, lover, or a stranger on the street: communication is key. To be able to effectively tell someone anything, to address a problem you may have and to come up with a solution, to organize events and outings with friends and family in hopes they run smoothly; Clear forms of communication must be expressed. To go to work and have tasks run smoothly communication must be at its best for the job to be effective, for the employees to stay on point, and for the outcome to be successful. Personally I feel as though formal and positive forms of communication skills have clearly lacked in the past 10 years due to social media and websites that are too personal and distracting. While some of it is a great tool to have, here are some reasons why I believe we should limit social media and forms of communications In July 2012 Americans spent 74.0 billion minutes on social media via a home computer, 40.8 billion minutes via apps, and 5.7 billion minutes via mobile web browsers, a total of 121.1 billion minutes on social networking sites equaling 22 straight days of social media. In my opinion that’s rather drastic and ridiculous. Opponents of social networking say that sites prevent face-to-face communication; waste time on frivolous activity; alter children’s brains and behaviors making them more prone to ADHD; expose users to predators like burglars and pedophiles; and spread false information. While it’s great for some things I believe there should be more restrictions to social sites with regards to what you can post, time limits, and how accessible the sites are. With less time spent with real human interaction I believe interpersonal and communication skills don’t develop correctly, resulting in poor human interaction and could lead to more social problems in day to day life. While social media is great for things with regards to collecting data and running businesses, it shouldn’t be as available and abused as much for people’s social life. For instance, personal conversation’s through text message is emotionless, dating sites are a lazy pathetic way to meet someone and in my opinion create false connections because people are looking too hard to find something they believe they most desperately need. Facebook can be a great tool