Jack Delaney ENGL 137H 11/19/2013 The Paradigm Shift of Digital Communication LOL. Three simple letters.

It stands for laughing out loud, as almost everyone is aware. My great aunt Judy is seventy-two years old, but you would never know it. She uses Facebook, knows what an app is, understands the concept of a hashtag, and even utilizes RSS feeds to get her news from several outlets. However, this very simple acronym tripped her up. As she was on Facebook one day, she was reading a status update from a friend. This status described the five-year anniversary of the death of a family member. My great aunt Judy decided to share her empathy by commenting lots of love. Being the hip, cool seventy-two year old that she is, she shortened this phrase to the simple acronym LOL. Thats what it must mean, right? No, not quite. She was informed of her mistake by another friend and she was mortified beyond belief. This is where communication in the digital age can go wrong. The shift from face-to-face, personal communication to the constant electronic contact of the 21st century has both helped and harmed how we get messages across to one another. Prior to the current digital age, communication was nearly entirely done face to face. Cell phones were available for those who liked to carry a device the size and weight of a brick with them at all times, but for the most part, people were limited to real life communication, post mail, and landline phone calls. With personal communication, there is no room for the LOL confusion; my great-aunt certainly would never have shortened her condolences to an insensitive acronym and the recipient would have known she meant well. Furthermore, people were forced

Delaney 2 to develop communication skills because the majority of their interactions would occur in person. In this way, perhaps technological advances have actually caused us to regress. In the early stages of the Internet and cell phones, communication underwent a massive shift. Instant messaging services like AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) allowed people to communicate instantaneously through text. AIM was released in 1997 and gained over 53 million users by 2005 (Petronzio). This service attracted younger people that could rapidly adapt to new technology, allowing a new avenue of communication and paving the path for the digital generation. The transition period between face-to-face communication and the pure text method is an interesting one. Emoticons such as :) and :P were created to mimic the emotions that are lost when only communicating through text. The development of emoticons show that humans need emotion to convey their meaning and that emotionless communication will likely never entirely replace face-to-face contact. Emotionless text can cause a lot of miscommunication; while on AIM, I would often wonder if a persons message was sarcastic, or intended to be a joke or a genuinely mean comment. The combination of basic emoticons and acronyms can offset this. The use of lol softens the blow of a supposed insult and lets the recipient of the message know that it is just a joke. Texting had character limits and prior popularity of unlimited texting plans, it cost money for each text, so texting was more used as a convenience than as a constant stream of communication. This use of online messaging systems and early cell phone use was the beginning stage of constant communication we currently experience. But even at this stage, you could log off or use an away message; online communication was usually a temporary means of talking to someone, not an open line for communication. Fewer people had cell phones, and you were certainly not expected to always keep it turned on. The balance of personal interaction with

Delaney 3 online chatting convenience acted as a transition period to the contemporary age of constant electronic communication. In November of 2004, only 65% of adults had a cell phone. By May 2013, over 91% of adults had a cell phone and more than half of American adults possessed a smart phone (Rainie). The first iPhone did not even come out until January of 2007, so this immense shift occurred in a very short amount of time. The prevalence of cell phones meant that people were constantly connected. With smart phones, people are even connected through multiple avenues of communication; at any time I can be reached by call, text, email, Facebook message, tweet, or FaceTime video call. There are certainly benefits to this, such as setting up personal interactions and keeping in touch with people, not to mention the convenience and efficiency that are achieved through the practical universality of smart phones. Social networks also underwent enormous growth in this time period. In 2004, Facebook had 1 million registered users. Within a year, there were 5.5 million, and over 50 million two years after that. From 2007 to 2011, Facebook gathered approximately 50 million new users every five months. Currently, there are over 1 billion active users of the social networking site (The Associated Press). Like cell phones, people began to recognize Facebook as almost essential. Other social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn also have grown in popularity and provide different services, whether it is quick updates about practically anything, or creating a digital age professional network. This furthers the constant connection people have to one another online and increases the amount of communication that goes on. As text-based communication has become more prevalent, emoticons have developed as well. Apple iPhones now come with a standard emoji keyboard, that has hundreds of icons that represent just about every emotion humans can express and also contains many objects as well.

Delaney 4 People can have entire conversations that solely consist of emojis. Acronyms have also expanded greatly to include terms like shaking my head (smh) and variations of lol to describe different degrees of laughing. This reveals that it is still part of human nature to want to convey emotions and even body language to people as you communicate. The implications for this shift in how we communicate are perhaps more interesting than the shift itself. First, I find the preference of texting over calling to be particularly intriguing. In the 18-29 demographic, cell phone users are over five times more likely to text someone rather than call him or her (Kluger). Experts are divided on the issue of whether or not texting negatively affects social skills. Some argue that it leads to isolation and being focused on your phone rather than interacting with the people around you, while others say it helps people develop communication skills by giving people time to process information and respond after contemplation (Bindley). The popularity of instantaneous texting and character-limited Twitter shows that people appreciate instant gratification. The iPhones messaging system shows you when someone else is typing a response and can even reveal when they have read the message. A large part of Twitters popularity comes from the fact that you can get news updates, funny quips, inspirational quotes, and connect with your favorite celebritiesall in under 140 characters. This culture of impatience then carries on to the real world. In a survey of 2,500 teachers, 83% said that the generation of students raised on technology had noticeably shorter attention spans than prior generations (Jefferies). People, myself included, expect most things to be done immediately. I get frustrated because it takes about 15 seconds for my laptop to connect to the Internet in my dorm room when I first start up my computer. This results in many members of my generation rushing through life and not stopping to actually appreciate what we have.

Delaney 5 However, research is not fully conclusive on this topic. I feel that it certainly affects some people, but it is often overstated in society that younger generations are apparently unable to focus on schoolwork or other tasks. When people are looking for a problem that the media or society perpetuates, a confirmation bias can come into play and cause the problem to become inflated. In many ways, the advent of social media has caused people to cultivate a fake persona. On social media sites, many people try to create the perfect version of themselves through a variety of methods. Have a Fakebook photo where it looks like you have a double chin? Untag yourself. Did you go to the gym? Make sure you tweet about it so your followers know youre in good shape. Go to a party? Instagram that hilarious pic of you and your friends there so everyone knows how popular you are. Many of us are guilty of creating a better-than-real-life image of ourselves online; its natural instinct to want to appear popular and attractive. Unfortunately, this gives others unrealistic expectations for what people are actually like. Similarly, behind the veil of anonymity that the internet can give, comments on YouTube videos and news website are filled with bold opinions and rude name calling that likely would not be expressed in real life. In both scenarios, the user is creating a personality that is different from his or her actual behavior. People also often fake emotions through digital communication, which can be a lot easier than doing so in real life. As Sharon Seline received texts filled with heart and smiley-face emoticons from her college-aged daughter, she thought nothing was wrong. Later that night, however, her daughter attempted suicide in her dorm room. If her daughter had called, or talked to her mother face-to-face, Sharon could have possibly detected the quiver in her daughters voice, or the hesitancy following the question how are you? Her daughter created a happy persona through texts, tweets, and Facebook, but was actually crying in her dorm room and

Delaney 6 showing other signs of depression (Tardanico). Constructing fake happiness is much easier behind the emotionless cloak of technology than in real life. According to renowned psychologist Albert Mehrabian, only 7% of communication is based on the actual words written or spoken. The rest is conveyed through body language and vocal tone (Thompson). The use of emoticons and acronyms certainly help convey tone, but body language is an enormous component that gets largely neglected in the digital age. By texting or using other text-based means of communicating, we are not maximizing our potential to communicate and inhibiting our ability to get our message across as clearly as possible. In this respect, technology has actually caused a regression in communication. Another enormous concern with the digital era of communication is the matter of privacy. Facebook messages, texts, tweets, and pictures posted online can be easily saved by your friends and followers. Even scarier, corporations and the government can also gain access to this. It is customary now to almost over-share your life; people feel the need to post their meals to Instagram and inform Twitter exactly where they are on an hourly basis. This gives friends and complete strangers a disturbing amount of access to your life. Facebook sells users personal information to advertisers to create more effective ads; the companies can see what else you have looked at online as well as your phone number and email address (Fowler). As recently revealed by Edward Snowden, the government has been listening in on our phone calls and checking our Internet search histories without warrants (Lee). This invasion of privacy is something that would be entirely avoided with face-to-face communication. The paradigm shift from personal, real life communication to the current prevalence of technological means of communication definitely has its benefits and drawbacks. I do not think that face-to-face communication will ever disappear completely, no matter how prevalent

Delaney 7 electronic methods of communication will become. The convenience of digital communication is an incredible thing, and shows how far humans have progressed technologically. We have found ways to fix some of the problems presented by technology, and I am confident we will continue to minimize the aftermath of these problems. On the other hand, the loss of the personal means of communication and conveying emotion could end up hurting humanity if we are not careful. At the very least, make sure you do not comment LOL on any sad statuses.

Delaney 8 Works Cited The Associated Press. "Number of Active Users at Facebook Over The Years." Yahoo! News. Yahoo!, 01 May 2013. Web. 16 Nov. 2013. Bindley, Katherine. "When Children Text All Day, What Happens To Their Social Skills?" The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 09 Dec. 2011. Web. 16 Nov. 2013. Fowler, Geoffrey A. "Facebook Sells More Access To Members." The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal, 1 Oct. 2012. Web. 16 Nov. 2013. Jefferies, Duncan. "Is Technology and the Internet Reducing Pupils' Attention Spans?" The Guardian. The Guardian, 11 Mar. 2013. Web. 16 Nov. 2013. Kluger, Jeffrey. "We Never Talk Any More: The Problem With Text Messaging." CNN. Cable News Network, 6 Sept. 2012. Web. 16 Nov. 2013. Lee, Timothy B. "Everything You Need To Know About the NSA's Phone Records Scandal." The Washington Post. The Washington Post, 6 June 2013. Web. 16 Nov. 2013. Petronzio, Matt. "A Brief History of Instant Messaging." Mashable. Mashable, 25 Oct. 2012. Web. 16 Nov. 2013. Rainie, Lee. "Cell Phone Ownership Hits 91% of Adults." Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center, 6 June 2013. Web. 16 Nov. 2013. Tardanico, Susan. "Is Social Media Sabotaging Real Communication?" Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 30 Apr. 2012. Web. 16 Nov. 2013. Thompson, Jeff. "Is Nonverbal Communication a Numbers Game?" Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers, 30 Sept. 2011. Web. 16 Nov. 2013.