Social Media and Communication I decided to write my report on an article dealing with the effects on social media. Everyone in today’s society is affected or uses social media such as Facebook or regular email to communicate. Many times we may not even physically see the person we are talking to for days, months, or even years. The article I found was written by Susan Tardinico published in April 2012 for Forbes titled “Is Social Media Sabotaging Real Communication?” In reading the article, I saw many points I feel shows how actual interpersonal communication is being replaced with electronic communication, and how it can actually be harmful.

The important issue to think about with social media is that are we really communicating? Tardinco points out that 93 percent of our communication context stripped away, we attempt to forge relationships and make decisions based on phrases. How many times have we asked a question via email or through a text message and the response we get back is an emoticon or some other one word response? This gives no clear indication in many situations if the sender really understands what you are trying to say or giving you a clear indication of acknowledgement. She points out that social media actually makes us less social, and acts as a surrogate for actual communication. It makes it far easier to hide behind a screen than to actually communicate face to face, which can actually make it awkward when face to face communication actually happens.

Another point Tardinico brings up in her article is that a generation gap between Generation Y and Millenials and their older counterpart Boomers is causing this shift from face to face communication to social media communication. The article points out that Gen Y and Millenials prefer to use social media versus actually stopping by a desk or cubicle and engaging in actual face to face