Technology & Communication - How Can Former Affect Latter?

People love to communicate. We are social beings by our very nature. As we evolved through time, so has evolved our ways of communication. Communication is our idea of forming relationships and bonds with people that surround us. With this evolution, came along the evolution of technology. With technology, we made our way to connect with the world where we cannot reach physically. We can make ourselves heard up to great distances and convey our thoughts.

However, as we expanded, our need of being heard outside our geographical reach, the communication and interaction with people within our physical reach is greatly affected. There is no doubt among people that technology is proven to be the most useful tool of the modern age. We have achieved so much because of technology. However, there are always instances that everything has some negative effect. Technology may just fall into this same sphere. Although technology has given us the opportunity to remain socially connected with thousands of people all over the world, the emotional intimacy with our immediate close one has suffered a great deal. In spite of information being flowing smoothly among people, the emotional detachment with this information has affected the quality of communication.

Affecting the Emotional Factor in Communication -

• Talking with someone involves a complex process of words, emotions, physical behaviour, expressions, and other such factors. It involves using our senses to perceive the surroundings and form bonding with other people.
• However, the technology of modern-day provides us with limited resources of using all our senses to nurture these social bonds and thus affecting the emotional factor in these interactions. The lack of these intricate details make the interaction less fruitful and hence affects the quality of the social bond.
• Such interactions affect the quality of communication of people who use social platforms to convey their messages. People have been using such platforms for not only conveying messages but for interacting with people in the form of images and memes (funny image relating a situation with an emotional state of a person).
• Moreover, another feature of technology can be seen in the form of emoticons where people express their emotions through the closest preset icon of facial expressions. Such features may facilitate the conversation going on within two individuals but are subject to the individual perception.

Take Away -
The quality of communication is dependent on the various factors such as facial expressions, tone, behaviours, etc., that help us form a bond representing trust, honesty, and loyalty. Using technology as a medium with available sources such as chatting apps, emoticons, or memes are subjected to interpretation and ambiguation. This greatly affects the interpersonal relationships among people. One can say these factors are responsible for weakened social bonds in the modern world we live today.