Instant Messaging
Instant messaging is a tool used by a vast majority of Internet users. This new tools has some advantages and some disadvantages. IM is used a lot of the time in education. It’s used for recruiting and admissions, student-faculty communications, library consultations, group projects, and immediate feedback, and discussions during lectures. Businesses are also finding instant messaging useful, as well as the deaf community. Some of the disadvantages are that teachers don’t feel comfortable using IM, instant messaging might interfere with students work, and viruses can be passed via instant messaging through links. Instant messaging seems to have a more positive side than negative.
Instant messaging has many benefits and that’s why so many people use it today. Instant messaging can happen instantly. One doesn’t have to sit around and wait for a response like with e-mail. Someone stated that, “You can check to see if a pal is online and available, key in a “Wassup?” and you’re chatting away” (Reid, 2004).
Also, IM has a big impact on students. With instant messaging they’re able to, “create, join, leave, and rejoin at will what the Pew Internet group calls “virtual study groups” (Woods, 2002). There are always some communication delays because of dinner interruptions or a favorite television show may be on. A high school girl stated that, “Not only do I research online, but I also use it for chatting with people for school. If I forget an assignment or need assistance on a concept I cannot grasp, the Internet is an easy way for me to get in touch with a peer who might be an aid to me” (2002). If a student has a teacher’s screen name than he or she can get imm...
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In the article, “Does Im Make U dum”, the author states how instant messaging has made us become “dum”. The issue of using popular texting abbreviations like, “lol”, “brb”, or “gtg” can either be an effective or unproductive way of expression. Using abbreviations through texting are so commonly used by children, teenagers, and adults. Statistics show that children are younger than ever for when they are first exposed to mobile phones and text messaging. A 2005 ChildWise study that one-in-four children under the age of eight had a mobile phone.
In addition, there is a difference between interacting with others over text or social media rather than in person. According to the article “Interpersonal Guidelines for Texting,” Suler (2010) explains the ‘Online Distribution Effect’ which relates to adolescent’s tendency to communicate through text:
By generating innovative ways students can interact with their family and peers via different networks, social media has gained incredible popularity amongst students of all grade-levels. While students have come to embrace these alternative methods of communication with great delight, teachers have not welcomed these social networks as warmly. From a teacher’s perspective, social media plays the role of the ultimate student distraction. The distraction has played out from sidetracking students away from homework outside of the classroom, to averting their attention to their gadgets in the classroom. In “Social Media Can Be Your Ally” by Nicholas Provenzano, he reasons that social media is not a teacher’s enemy.
Constant internet interaction can advance to issues with paying attention, focusing, and resisting impulses. Clifford Noss says, “We’ve got a large and growing group of people who think the slightest hint that something interesting might be going on is like catnip. They can’t ignore it.” This leads to people simply interrupting their daily tasks, just to check their phones, thus causing them to be distracted and not get their work finished. This is a major reason we should participate in “Shut Down Your Screen Week.” Having all of these distractions out of the classroom would mold classes to run much more conveniently and
With all the social networking apps and chat apps, kids are starting to use those more than actual face to face interactions. They find it easier just to text someone how to do something instead of meeting up with them as having them explain it to them in person. With having face-to-face interactions, “students can form friendships and relationships with their peer” according to the article “5 Problems with Technology in the Classroom” by Heick.
A quote from the book, Signs of Life in the USA by Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon, in chapter 5, The Cloud, mentions “texting and IM-ing my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort.” wrote one student. “When I did not have those two luxuries, I felt quite alone and secluded from my life. Although I go to a school with thousands of students, the fact that I was not able to communicate with anyone via technology was almost unbearable.” In today’s society, many teenagers have cell phone as early as in elementary school and many communicate through it. I believe that many students’ lives are connected together by constantly text and call each other, but keep in touch in such way that opt out of the communication pattern would be equal to reject from social life. Technology have improved our lives by making communication easier and effortless, however it causes a lack of social skill especially with
Text messaging has become a norm in our generation, as technology rapidly advances and gives way to more efficient forms of communication in a fast-paced world; and many are skeptical about the influence this new form of interaction is having on our society, especially with our younger generation. David Crystal, a professor at the University of Wales, writes “2b or Not 2b?” in support of text messaging. He insists, despite those who underestimate or negate the beneficial influence text messaging has on language proficiency, that “there is increasing evidence that [texting] helps rather than hinders literacy” and that the fairly recent form of communication has actually been around for a while and “is merely the latest manifestation of the human ability to be linguistically creative and to adopt language to suit the demands of diverse settings. In contrast, Jeffery Kluger argues in “We Never Talk Anymore: The Problem with Text Messaging” that text messaging is rapidly becoming a substitute for more genuine forms of communication and is resulting in difficulty among young peoples of our generation to hold a face-to-face conversation, engage in significant nonverbal expression, and ultimately build effective relationships with family, friends and co-workers. Both writers’ present valid arguments, however, my personal experience with text messaging has led me to agree more with Crystal’s view on the matter. Text messaging is indeed having a positive effect on society by making frequent texters primarily aware of the need to be understood, as well as offering betterment of spelling and writing through practice, and reinventing and expanding on a bygone dimension of our language through the use of rebuses and abbreviations.
Nowadays, developed technology makes communicating easier. Text message is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are not in the same vicinity of each other to be heard directly. According to the article “Texting tendinitis in a teenager” by Isaiah W. Williams, “Students at age between 13 to 18 years old send 173 billion text messages monthly by 293 million cell phone, on average, spend 1 hour and 35 minutes and send 118 messages each day.” (Although some people avoid talking on phone and prefer texting), but texting is more unfavorable for three reasons: Increasing the risk of accident while texting, Using in an unappropriated time, and Misunderstanding abbreviations.
People can "talk" to others by sending email messages, at the speed of pressing the send key. This information is instantly transmitted to the receiver, who can in turn, reply quickly. Today, one can even literally talk to someone else, just as if he/she were actually phoning someone over traditional phone lines. While the quality is not as clear as regular lines, the cost is considerably less.
In the past decade, technology brings huge impacts on social interaction. From phone call to facetime, from blog to Facebook. Advance technology enables us to reach and communicate with people in a more convenient and broad way, no matter how far these people are away from us. Medium of communication are growing. However, some old ways of communications never fade out. And I am going to talk about
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Technology has had a negative impact on education by causing distractions during class lectures and assignments. The over use of technology is leading to a loss in communication skills and troubles in reading. The use of technology causes many people to have the temptation for cheating in and out of classrooms, resulting in students not wanting to study. Not every student has the capability of connecting to the internet or have contact to technology. This creates difficulties for those students without connection to the internet to complete online assignments or have accesses to their school’s resources. Also, for online courses, students have to wait for an email response in order to get help or to understand a lecture that the professor is
People in the present society have turned from the use of the old means of communication to the more advanced and technological ways of communicating. Technology has made it easier for people to communicate in a faster, efficient, and cost saving means through the introduction of the communication channels. The world has turned out to be the centre for technology with different technologies emerging daily as the people continue to develop from time to time to cope with the growing technology. The benefits of adopting the communication technology are explained in this article which shows why people do not function without technology.