Online Custom «Face-to-Face and Electronic Communication» Essay Sample

Today, people usually communicate more online than in real life. Electronic services allow virtually any time to get in touch with someone from the different corner of the globe. These services are incredibly convenient and save a lot of time. However, according to scientists, the growing popularity of online conversations adversely affects the communication skills of users. Thus, the problem of live and virtual communication should be studied in more detail in order to evaluate its impact on the modern society.

Virtual communication forces people to think, evaluate phrases in sentences, construct phrases from words, and write down their messages placing punctuation marks. Thus, people have the opportunity to check the meaning and correctness of the written, and only after that send their messages to someone. However, not always can people transmit all thoughts through virtual communication in the form in which they are initially formed. It was quite difficult to transfer intonation of the message, but soon, for this purpose, smiles were invented. However, smiles do not always help and quite often even distract (Tardanico, 2012).

In turn, the recipient of the information makes the same actions upside-down. In online communication there are no intonations and emotions. The only sign of change of emotionality is an exclamation mark and capital letters, but they also do not give a full picture of transmitted information, which is a big minus of online communication (Hunter, n.d.). It is not pleasant to each recipient, and not everyone wants to think about what the interlocutor meant. Live communication favorably differs in that interlocutors can hear each other with their ears, see each other and the subject of discussion by their eyes, and also use other sense organs. People perceive part of the information not only through the words, but also through the mimicry and gestures that are absent in the Internet communication (Ean, 2010).

When communicating face-to-face, thoughts are convicted in phrases, which, with the help of the pronunciation, are understood by the interlocutor more simply. It happens due to the pronouncing speed, loudness, intonation, and pauses. These factors are not less important during the information transfer perceived by a human brain. Verbal and visual information supplement each other, but also simultaneously suppress each other. The transfer of a certain volume of information during the visual contact with the object of information can be poor for verbal information because it is simply not necessary (Tardanico, 2012).

Researchers found out that the participants of the Internet conversations are inclined to ignore each other more often, lie much, and select long phrases, which is not observed during the face-to-face communication. In recent years the situation has only aggravated. More and more children and teenagers from the earliest age get used to communicate, for example, by the means of social networks and services like "Skype" (Hunter, n.d.). The researches of online communication showed that many participants prefer to use text messages, because it allows them to choose expressions more carefully and pass to the interlocutor that information which they deem necessary. On this basis, the scientists concluded that the majority of users during a face-to-face conversation do not feel as confident and comfortable as during the online correspondence (Ean, 2010).

Today scientists, psychologists, and sociologists are concerned with the problem of the person’s isolation from society, which is observed because of the rapid development of the Internet services in recent years. The modern person lives in virtual space, which creates an illusion of a meaningful communication, but in reality, it is a poor substitue of the real world. Experts claim that social networks can even provoke some mental disorders when this hobby goes beyond all limits. Therefore, people should not aspire to stay in touch always and everywhere. In such a way, the mankind risks to unlearn how to communicate without the means of electronic assistants (Uvimolchai, 2011).

People have forgotten how to communicate in real life. It became much simpler for them to exchange e-mails or messages in social networks. Today the onetime simplicity is peculiar to people of the senior generations who do not want to seize modern technologies and prefer live communication. Popularity of real meetings is decreasing day by day, but it does not mean at all that they have become insignificant. Nothing can be compared to the richness of information, which generated by the human brain during the real live meeting (Hunter, n.d.).

Employees are increasingly advocating cancellation of meetings, replacing them with phone calls, e-mails, and communication via electronic messengers in order to save time. However, actually, this economy is illusory. Correspondences via email eventually turn into the bulk of letters for the sorting of which a lot of time is required. Phone or Skype conversations can last for hours. In addition, it becomes quite difficult to keep understanding of the essence of such negotiations, since information arrives from a large number of sources at the same time (Uvimolchai, 2011).

Taking into account all abovementioned information, it should be noted that, undoubtedly, information technologies and social networks connect people. However, today the question is whether online communication promotes interconnectedness. People increasingly lock inside of themselves and do not share their successes or problems. All the experiences can be shared via social networks today. Fortunately, in many developed countries it is widespread to hold breakfast-time meetings in houses or restaurants. Joint breakfasts create amicable atmosphere, which promotes rapprochement and relaxation. As a result, problems are solved easily, and the contracts are signed quickly. The ability for live communication is granted to people by the nature, and, therefore, refusing this great gift in favor of the virtual communication is unnatural. Communication demands daily practice, since otherwise this capacity will fade, which will lead to the problems in all areas of life.