Next Generation Communicators

Journal 3

When I think about the students that will be coming into college and then into the adult world, I get a little apprehensive and anxious. My reason for these feelings is because although I have seen communication technology aid interpersonal communication, I am also seeing a greater gap in the art of person to person communication.

More and more people are communicating over the phone, through text messaging, IM a video web cam, etc. And although much of their conversations may be casual, some are indeed very heated, or deal with conflict or even deep relational topics. As we learned in class on Tuesday, the most common way for a Junior high student to end a dating relationship is through an online conversation. In my mind this is wimpy and cheap. They do this because the risk of seeing someone's reaction and having hurt feelings is to high in person, so the conversation takes place online.

Perhaps that is only one example, but my question for us is, How does that affect our ability to vulnerable to one another? Are we going to need CMC (computer mediated communication) to voice or hurts or concerns because we are uncomfortable with someone's reaction. The art of speech, the joy of close friendship through experience could be lost.

So in effect our society is changing. These changes are altering the face of the next generation. There are both positive and negatives to this affect. They are seen above. My question is I wonder if we will progressively get more technologically dependent that it is unhealthy, and for some it already is. However I wonder what the future will look like, if technology will continue to drive our society or if we will get fed up and revert back to more "old fashioned" types of communication. I guess only time will tell.