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The Impact of Technology on Interpersonal Communication: Challenges and Threats Faced

by Kids

In her journalistic investigation “Face Time vs. Screen time: The Technological

Impact on Communication” Chandra Johnson claims that nowadays kids overusing gadgets

experience significant problems with interpersonal communication, such as failure in being

emphatic towards others, lack of management of their own emotions, difficulties in building

lasting and sufficient relationships as well as the risk of misunderstanding with older

generations.

Nowadays social networks are taking a big part in the teenagers’ social life. They use

Facebook and Twitter and many other networks all the time to communicate with their peers.

They are using network publics a lot. Teens consider social networks cool places and it is a

widespread claim that you are no one when you are not using a certain network (Boyd).

Virtual life became very important for teens self-actualization, social living, and status.

Dahan Boyd interviewed a teenage girl after a football game and she told, that she wasn’t

thinking about Facebook during the game, but after the match was over she posted photos

from the event and continued talking with her friends about it (Boyd) . So, it may be seen that

teens are using social networks as a place where they can discuss and longer emotions from

certain event. This trend of constant using of social networks is disturbing parents and
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psychologists who are trying to forecast the sequences of such behavior. Of course, it may be

said that fears of the new technologies always took place when something new was appearing

and spreading in society, even the sewing machines invention faced the wave of public

protests (Boyd). But there are strong reasons to aware the impact of constant online living on

people’s communication skills.

Kids who overuse gadgets experience significant problems with interpersonal

communication. Social networks in some way widen teens’ opportunities of communication.

They have an extra space for gathering together and sometimes it solve the problem of

physical space needed (Boyd). They also are able to communicate with the people they could

hardly talk face-to-face, making friends with people from other countries of cities. But there

is a suggestion, that permanent texting may cause problems with understanding emotions of

others and kids may be less empathic and sympathetic. Chandra Johnson insists that spending

more time with their devices than on face-to-face communication leads to degradation of

verbal and emotive skills and also produces a lack of emotive response in everyday life

because emojis cannot replace the real hug and so on. In her essay, Johnson dwells on the

idea that by “engaging with a screen than with other kids or adults can struggle to understand

emotion” because augmented interaction with the screen rather than with real life diminishes

the role of affection and attachment (Johnson). Of course, exploring the world and learning to

understand other people by their body language, facial expressions, and voice intonations in a

direct talk is priceless, especially for teens while they are just starting forming their social

skills.

Johnson also leads the readers to the discovery that children who use technologies all

the time lack the management of their own emotions. Social media give a lot of possibilities

to express the emotions and feelings and to get a feedback. Network publics work as places

where one may vent oneself, find mates. As revealed by Johnson, a number of researchers
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highlight that “technology is a poor substitute for the real” life and a range of emotions

needed to deal with problems in reality (Johnson). Kids have to learn to live in the real world

and to manage their emotions and feelings by themselves and communicating with people in

person.

Moreover, in the result of overusing emotions, children have difficulties in building

lasting and sufficient relationships. An important part of growing up is finding out who you

are. Teens are much concerned with this question and using of social media may cause such

problems as creating a certain image of oneself online and being overworried about their

online profile more that their real life emotions and events. Another problem is concluded by

Johnson, that instead of establishing efficient relations with their peers, teens exhibit a “hyper

connection” to their parents (Johnson). There is a double side effect of frequent

communicating with parents: it is good to create a strong connection between parent and a

child, but teens have to learn to deal with the world and with themselves by their own. These

factors may have a negative impact on teen’s understanding of their own personality and

cause problems in building strong relationships.

Finally, these children are at risk of miscommunication with their parents. Johnson

admits that communication in families is nowadays hardened by the fact that “children and

parents are speaking very different languages now: one analog and one digital”. In his book

Boyd mentioned a talk of a teenage boy with his mother in which he told her that “if you are

not on MySpace, you do not exist”(Boyd). Such views may lead to a widening of a gap

between parents and children while first are standing outside the modern trends and the last

ones show lower respect to older people because of such views. Regardless nowadays family

member communicate with each other much more frequent via various technologies, the

quality of the communication has lowered. Families are spending much time looking at their

screens even while sitting in one room and talking to each other. This leads to lower
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emotional response each of them gets. Emily Drago provided the research that showed that

expansion of technology is negatively influencing face-to-face communication. People are

more using technologies to communicate with friends and family than engaging personally. A

majority of observed individuals admitted that they feel the quality of their conversations

degraded in the presence of technology and many of them were bothered by technologies

using by others while spending time together. Nearly half of survey respondents (46%)

communicate more often with friends and family via technology than in person, indicating

strongly that face-to-face communications have decreased both in quality and in quantity

(Drago). To help the children improve their communication skills parents should take

measures to handle the device expansion. For example providing family days without any

technologies.

In her essay “Face Time vs. Screen Time: The Technological Impact on

Communication” Chandra Johnson effectively proves the idea that kids who overuse gadgets

experience significant mental problems. First of all, their interpersonal communication skills

are negatively affected due to the lack of face-to-face communication. Secondly, the overuse

of technology patterned with misinterpretation of the true nature of emotions also causes

failure in being emphatic towards others as well as the lack of management of their own

emotions. Finally, difficulties in building lasting and sufficient peer relationships coupled

with the risk of misunderstanding between older and younger generations are among other

top threatens of the discussed technological discourse.

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Works cited

Boyd, Dahan. It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. , 2014. Web

Drago, Emily.“The Effect of Technology on Face-to-Face Communication”. Elon Journal of

Undergraduate Research in Communications, 2015, Vol. 6 No. 1. Web. 26 Nov. 2016

Johnson, Chandra. “Face Time Vs. Screen Time: The Technological Impact On

Communication”. Deseretnews.Com, 29 Aug. 2014, Web. 10 Nov. 2016.