Is Screen to Screen the new Face to Face?

Our world of technology has become a nonstop moving train of updates, changes in screen size, colors of new phones, types of service we can have. Our communication has even jumped on this train, the faster the response the better we feel. We are in this world of need to know basis constantly. Is it healthy? Why is it so difficult for us to wait for a text message for five minutes, without having a melt down?  When we send a text message such as a question, and we feel the need know the response just as fast as we send it. We put our world on high demand information most of the day, which takes away from the present situation we are in. We are in this constant battle of information overload and real time situations.

                In class lecture we learned of two types of message exchanges. The first type of exchange is in real time, which is synchronous. This type is a face to face form of communication.  There is no delay in terms of waiting for a response. You can see the reaction the person has, and looking at their nonverbal you can read a lot from that person. Along with that phone conversations are synchronous because a person is connected directly to the sender of the message. This communication is fast and easy to have because it is available to us right away. When we have a type of communication through social media or emails it has a delay. The Asynchronous of it drives our generations crazy. We are always checking our phone frequently to see if there is a message available to us. We are in constant need to know about our friends, family and possibly people who we don’t really know like celebrities. Why is that? It is just because we can have that knowledge right away, so we want to know the latest and greatest of the world? Or has this addiction just hurt our people skills because we don’t have to talk to real person because we have the electronic version of them.

                If technology became any faster than it already is, would it become dangerous to us? The consistency of having data in our faces at all seconds of the day will eventually drive us mentally insane. Our face to face has really become screen to screen. This generation will go hang out with friends, than sit in a room together on our phones. We don’t ever put down our technology and enjoy the moments we are in.  We lost our power to remove ourselves from our technology because we have become so attached to it.

                Is there a way to stop this train and get off for a few hours? Being able to disconnect yourself from the social media world is a difficult task for some people. I found it difficult myself because I always am worried that I am missing something going on in my phone. I should be worried about what is going on around me. Another problem that arises when we can’t seem to disconnect is when we do finally power down our phones, can we handle the real world? Our human skills have turned into our phone skills. I hope this generation can take the time to disconnect from their media world and come back to the real world. We should bring back the face to face world and put down our screens.