"We expect more from technology and less from each other,” says Sherry Turkle, explaining how technology has become more of a friend to us than our own peers.

Are we more into that tiny blue screen than our peers around us? Looking around, it is not uncommon to see a group of people together, their heads down, eyes glued to their phones instead of conversing face-to-face. Our cell phones have made it easier to communicate, where we are not worried about how our voice may sound, because we can just add a few emojis after the text message to make it less serious. Our phones have become new “appendages” to us, because when we don’t have it in our pocket or hand, it feels like a part of us is missing.

Most of us are guilty of being on our phones during a conversation with another person, without even realizing how damaging it is to our communication skills. Our posts and tweets have now become more important than genuine conversation. The limit of characters in most social media sites have caused us to create slang that has begun to carry over in everyday conversation and writing. Social media has negatively affected our face-to-face communication and grammar skills.

One major thing that social media has changed is privacy. Communication through our cell phones have closed the gap between us and the other person you're talking to. The problem is, some people communicate to people they have never even met before. Teens today are more willing to share their private information online, and in a Pew Research study where there were 802 participants, 71% were willing to share their school and home addresses, and 20% were comfortable sharing their cell phone number on social media. With so many willing to share their addresses, child abductions are becoming much easier.

Another issue arising is the slipping of grammar skills. The informality of social media sites may be a contributing factor to this issue, and shortcuts and slang are common due to the limit of letter characters. In Twitter, with the 140 letter count limit, full words have to be left out in order to get your point across in the message. But, as Connie C. Eble, an English professor at the University of North Carolina, puts it, "Today's students are actually much better writers than they were 30 years ago. Back then young people often used proper grammar to write not coherent essays." Students are no longer being driven with grammar. Good grammar is still just as important not only in school essays, but in the workforce.  Communicating to authoritative figures has become like messaging an old friend, when in reality, it can hurt what the person thinks about you. "I won't hire someone with bad grammar, "Kyle Wiens, CEO of the iFixit online community and founder of Dozuki software, wrote in a Harvard Business Review. Bad grammar in the workforce is a sign of bad credibility.

Punctuation is also changing right before our eyes. In text messages and messages on social media, it's as if the simple mark at the end has gone extinct, and if it is there, it doesn't mean the same thing as it used to be. Periods not only end a statement anymore, but also can be a sign of anger. In the article "The Period is Pissed," by Ben Crair, he says how line breaks have become more efficient, and in an American University study on college students messaging and texting, they only used punctuation ending marks 39% of the time in texting, and 45% of the time in online chat. Because it is so hard to read the emotion and meaning of the text, misunderstandings are more prominent. The word "OK" Has also evolved into the single letter "k," which shows how texting and online chatting has caused a slack in even the simplest of words.

Has our writing improved though? According to Simon Kuper, the writer of “How Social Media Improved Writing,” it has. Writing now leads to conversation, and back then, when only professional writers wrote, social media now has become an open door for anyone to write. Writing is overtaking talking as the most common form of interaction, but is that a good thing? Talking is so unique, where eye-contact, body language, and voice is so crucial to get a point across, whereas texting and writing can be spoken in another person’s mind, allowing them to interpret the writing in their own words; this can lead to misunderstandings. This communication takes away from the rawness of talking to someone when they are actually there. 

Face-to-face conversation is now a weird experience to teens and adults today. Nowadays we can just text, call, or Facetime them instead. The major benefit of these though is that people can connect to other people based on shared interests rather than distance, also called "networked individualism”, according to Barry Wellman, a lecturer on the topic at the Political Networks Conference in Montreal. Our generation is becoming dependent on technology, where we text while we’re in classes and with friends, and adults are on their phones during business meetings. Sherry Turkle, who has studied technologies and mobile connections and has talked to hundreds of people of different backgrounds and ages about their phones for the past 15 years, has “learned that the little devices most of us carry around are so powerful that they change not only what we do, but also who we are.” We have become so accustomed to being on our phones that we forget about the friends and family around us. At dinner tables, it is common to see their faces down checking an email or post or text message before they eat a bite of the food that is supposed to bring us as a family together, to talk about their day, face-to-face. 

Because face-to-face conversations are becoming harder and harder to accomplish, children now have trouble talking to their parents about personal issues. In an infographic on cyberbullying, 25% of preteens and teens are victims of cyberbullying, yet only 1 in 10 of them tell their parent if they are being cyber bullied. Social media is a central place for bullying, and it is easy for more than one person to get involved, whether they are the predator or the victim. Another scary statistic (also found in the cyberbullying infographic) is that 1 in 5 seriously considers suicide. Cyber bullying can be avoided by parents monitoring their child’s social media and text messages (just not being too controlling about it), blocking the cyber bully, and telling an adult if you are being bullied. 

In conclusion, social media has damaged our communication and our writing. Our phones have become a new distraction from the world around us, yet they have become a door to look into the world in a new and exotic way. Our voices can be heard, but not from the friends and family around us. Social media has become a place of selfies, bullying, complaints, and misspelled or abbreviated words. We need to look up from our cell phones and enjoy what's around us instead of being so focused on what is on the tiny screen.