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Technology has revolutionized the way people communicate, linking humans in a real-time network across the globe. However, technology has also changed communication in many ways, and some of them are not for the better. While some of these negative effects are relatively minor, in some cases they have had profound effects on the lives and well-being of users.

An Omnipresent Distraction

Cell phones and mobile devices allow users to stay connected even when away from their computers. While this can be a great benefit, especially in emergencies, it can also be a dangerous distraction. Hundreds of thousands of people suffer injuries every year in accidents involving a distracted driver, and texting and cell phone use are primary sources of distraction behind the wheel. While it may only take a driver a few seconds to read a text message, during that time his vehicle could travel the length of a football field without his eyes on the road. Technology can also be a distraction at home or in the office, as always-present instant messaging applications and social networks can draw a user's attention away from more important matters.

Dehumanization and Depersonalization

Technology can also affect the quality of communication. One of the great benefits of the Internet is its anonymity, allowing users to explore and communicate without having to give away their personal details. Unfortunately, this can also lead to users behaving in ways completely different than they would in a face-to-face conversation. When the Internet reduces a person to a faceless screen name, it can make it hard for some users to remember that an actual person exists behind the avatar, which can encourage hostility and exclusionary behavior. Young people are especially prone to online hostility, with 43 percent of kids reporting that they've suffered online bullying -- 25 percent of them on more than one occasion.

Social Isolation

Technology can create elaborate social networks online, but these can unexpectedly lead to social isolation. In some cases, communicating online replaces face-to-face interaction for users, reducing the amount of time they actually spend in the company of other human beings. In addition, these social networks sometimes replace a small number of strong social connections with a larger number of much shallower connections, leading to situations where a user may have large numbers of "friends" but few actual real-world companions. This can lead to depression and feelings of loneliness, and the lack of a support system can make it difficult for users to reach out and find help for these issues. According to Slate, polling suggests the number of adults who describe themselves as "lonely" has doubled since 1980, and that spending more time online with social networks can actually have an adverse effect on a user's happiness level.

Privacy Issues

Another potential hazard of communicating via technology is a lack of privacy. Communications you send over the Internet may be insecure, allowing third parties to read email conversations or intercept instant messages. If an outsider manages to compromise an email account or application, he may gain access to months or even years of correspondence. Encryption can help keep communications safe from prying eyes, but protecting every link in the social communication chain can be difficult. Malware authors are even beginning to target phones and mobile devices, recognizing them as always-available windows into their owners' personal lives.

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Negative Effects of Technology on Communication | Techwalla

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Technology has revolutionized the way people communicate, linking humans in a real-time network across the globe. However, technology has also changed communication in many ways, and some of them are not for the better. While some of these negative effects are relatively minor, in some cases they have had profound effects on the lives and well-being of users.

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The impact of technology has both positive and negative sides. However, logically thinking, technology has bettered the communication process and has done some harm. We discuss the overall impact of technology on communication.

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An Overview of the Overall Impact of Technology on Communication

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The impact of technology has both positive and negative sides. However, logically thinking, technology has bettered the communication process and has done some harm. We discuss the overall impact of technology on communication.

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We've all done it: pulled out our phone in a moment of waiting in line to get coffee or while your friend is driving you to the movies. It's a habit many of us do multiple times daily. Deloitte found that Americans check their phones collectively 8 billion times per day; a Gallup poll found most users are checking it at least hourly, if not more.

However, this habit of constantly getting sucked into your digital world could have a detriment effect on your communication skills when it comes to business. If you become uncomfortable talking to colleagues when you don't have anything specific to talk about, this could influence your potential working relationship and overall productivity down the road.

Psychology Today found that small talk amongst coworkers (sometimes known as "water cooler talk") could actually increase productivity 10-15%, due to the fact that we are social animals and feeling like we are part of a community can increase our overall happiness and output at work.

Here are some of the ways we are using technology as a communication detriment and why it's worth it to fight the urge to let it get in the way of building better relationships.

Avoid Using Technology as Filler For Silence

Before smartphones, people often filled silences in waiting rooms or while waiting for a meeting to start with small talk-the weather, a recent news item, what holiday is coming up next. In order to avoid this, many people instead pull out their smartphone, using it as a digital "security blanket" that makes it seems like you have emails to answer or people to text back.

Culturally, if we see someone hurrying down the street, phone next to their ear, we assume they are on their way to an important appointment that is probably much more important than our own agenda. However, we should sacrifice the need to look important to others for actually doing the work to make ourselves happier or more effective in the office.

Small Talk Can Affect Your Overall Well-being

However, the next time you feel the urge to pull out your phone (even if everyone around you is doing it), consider sparking up a conversation with someone nearby instead. If it's a stranger, remark on the location's décor or the weather.

If it's a colleague or friend, ask about their family or what projects they have going on. Many conversations not only lead to better relationships, but more positive interactions with others can increase your overall daily happiness, according to the Scientific American.

Choosing Virtual Means Over In-Person or Phone Conversations

Because I work remotely, my colleagues and I spend the majority of our time talking over virtual means, like Google Hangouts, Skype, or email. While this can help you ask questions more quickly without getting distracted, there are some conversations that would be better solved with a quick call or a stop to their desk, if you work in the same office. The Huffington Post recommends that if your IM conversation takes more than 10-15 minutes to explain something or get on the same page, an in-person or phone chat would've likely been better.

While I do find that I get to know my colleagues better when we are IMing about our lives or what we're working on (which is comparable to a virtual "water cooler"), I do feel closer to them, which does make our working relationship better. A Harvard study found that women's expectations of work relationships place a high value on loyalty and trust, something that can be built slowly through regular communication, both online and in-person.

However, if we are on different sides of a topic or I am trying to walk someone through something, I've found that a call is much easier. In addition, one benefit of calls on Hangouts or Skype that technology has made exponentially better is screen share. It allows us to see what the other person is seeing, which makes problem-solving and brainstorming go much more quickly. I also often record my screen when explaining a task I need help with to send to my virtual assistants so they can review and work on it in their own time. This is often much quicker than typing out instructions in an email.

When you are taking more than a few seconds to type your replies in IM or email, consider if a quick phone call or meeting would make the process easier.

Using Digital Communication to Build Relationships

When it comes to determining what type of communication is best for the situation, ask yourself what would make you happier and what would further your relationship with those around you.

If you're at the DMV and Candy Crush is the only thing that will make you less stressed, then it's usually worth pulling your phone out. However, if you're with a group of coworkers for your monthly book club lunch, leave your phone in your pocket or bag and focus on catching up with the people that are right in front of you. This can often leave to better dividends for building your relationships more than checking your email or Facebook ever could.
Featured image created via Canva. Other image via DepositPhotos.

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Is Technology Crippling Our Communication Skills? - Search Engine Journal

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We've all done it: pulled out our phone in a moment of waiting in line to get coffee or while your friend is driving you to the movies. It's a habit many of us do multiple times daily.

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In a world of tweets and texts, email and instant messaging, are we communicating any better?

Or is modern technology making us lazy about actually talking to each other, with damaging effects on both business and society?

This was the issue that the Today programme guest editor Sir Victor Blank asked me to investigate. Having only had a brief email explaining what he wanted, I was still rather unclear about his thesis - until I got him on the phone for a chat. Which sort of made his point...

"Technology is a massive aid to communication," he told me, "but if it takes away regular face-to-face or direct conversations, then you lose something of the softer edges."

Sir Victor, the former chairman of Lloyds TSB, seemed particularly concerned about the impact that modern methods were having in the business world, with executives firing off emails in anger, and making deals they might later regret, rather than seeing the whites of the eyes of their counterparts in face-to-face negotiations.

That was a concern shared by one person Sir Victor suggested as a possible interviewee. The former Times editor Lord Rees-Mogg told me that if he were in the newspaper business today he would of course use the most modern methods. But he felt that many people could become addicted to email and social networking. "I do notice that emails are often fired off without any real consideration - they're also much ruder than more considered communications, so I think they're inferior."

Perhaps surprisingly, that view might get a sympathetic hearing at the technology firm Atos, which has decided to phase out email as an internal communications tool. "Email has become the easy way to communicate but also the lazy way," says Rob Price, the UK managing partner of Atos.

Anyone who has arrived at their desk to find that they have been copied in on dozens of internal emails of no relevance, will say amen to that. But Atos is not rejecting modern communication techniques, simply recognising that a new generation already thinks email is old hat. Its new recruits arrive from university accustomed to instant messaging and social networks - far more rapid methods of communication.

Another major corporation has recognised that forcing its employees to be "always on" has its limits. Volkswagen's Works Council has decreed that the German firm's Blackberry server should stop sending emails to employees thirty minutes after their shift ends.

But what I really needed was someone who had taken an objective, scientific look at the way we use communications technology - and Dr Monica Bulger of the Oxford Internet Institute fitted the bill.

Far from dumbing down the way we communicate, technology had made us smarter, she told me. In particular, executives like Sir Victor Blank had been made more literate by the arrival of computers and word processing. "Prior to word processors, executives would dictate messages to secretaries and speak on the phone. So the use of technology has improved literacy."

Dr Bulger conceded that face-to-face communication was important, but said it also had its dangers: "I've sat in meetings where people have said things they shouldn't have." Whereas email gave more time for considered reflection: "You can do the count to ten rule and think a bit before you respond."

Overall, the academic's conclusion was that the different technologies now available to us were helping not hindering communication. But she conceded that there was an issue with what she described as "cognitive overload or data deluge."

Tell me about it. As someone who is addicted to these technologies, I still find myself oppressed by the sheer quantity of emails, phone messages and social media activity that need to be dealt with each day. I can't imagine how I would do my job without tools like Twitter. Yet I sometimes wonder whether I communicated better 30 years ago.

In my student days, before the age of the mobile or email, we used to simply drop in on people or bump into them in the street - but still managed to have rich and varied social lives and make enduring friendships.

So I decided to go back to university to give the final word to members of today's Facebook generation. I knocked on the door of my son's student flat in Oxford and asked him to go and get some friends from next door - he immediately reached for his phone to text them, rather than walk a few steps.

But once we'd gathered them together, the students proved to have quite a nuanced view of modern communication. One of them hardly ever used social networks and said he just bumped into people in the street; another mentioned the danger of becoming obsessed with Facebook at the expense of face-to-face communication.

And a third summed it up for me: "You use social networking and modern technology to arrange meeting people face to face, when otherwise you might not see them for a few weeks - you might not bump into them." We agreed that new communication technologies provided an addition, not a replacement, for traditional means.

So what shall I tell Sir Victor? It seems to me that his concerns about the impact of email, social networking and instant messaging on our ability to communicate, are somewhat exaggerated. But maybe we need to meet face to face to talk it through...

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We don't talk any more - is technology harming communication?

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In a world of tweets and texts, email and instant messaging, are we communicating any better? Or is modern technology making us lazy about actually talking to each other, with damaging effects on both business and society? This was the issue that the Today programme guest editor Sir Victor Blank asked me to investigate.

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Business doesn't happen face to face as often as some would like. Instead, today's communication depends on conference calls and emails chains that make it challenging to get to know your partners. It's been a common lament among business people dissatisfied with the technology that has become the norm in their daily lives. But with so many workers worldwide now working in virtual teams, many business relationships do depend on technology. And that's not a bad thing -- as long they're using the right technologies in the right ways.

"Collaboration technology sprang up 20 years ago, but we kept acting, behaviorally, like we did when we were meeting face to face," said Keith Ferrazzi, best-selling author of the books "Never Eat Alone" and "Who's Got Your Back."

As it turns out, the answer to all of the complaints about the evolving workplace wasn't to abandon technology for a more human way of working, but to evolve technology to make the new way of working more human.

"People have to have a delightful experience in their hand -- a joyful experience -- all behind a single plane of glass," said Rick Puskar, SVP of Customer Experience & Services for Unify.

A new generation of communications technologies are upon us. They are addressing the new way to work that is permeating workplaces worldwide. It's what Puskar calls a "dynamic, cultural shift in the marketplace." They're making the global workplace exactly what it's looking for: a joyful, delightful experience.

Who wouldn't want to engage with that?
Mobile Work-from-Home
We live in a global workplace without time zones or office hours. Just ask any spouse who has waited to serve the main course while awaiting a husband or wife to finish a work email at the table. Delayed dinners notwithstanding, the ability to shoot out that email at the dinner table actually allows that spouse to get out of work an hour earlier and be there in the first place. A fair tradeoff.

And it's also good for employers when employees have happy, balanced lives. "You might be on a conference call with Europe in the wee hours and have to get your kids to a soccer game in the afternoon," Ferrazzi said. "You can do it working virtually, and there's real value in accommodating that employee need."

The better that mobile technology becomes, and the more employers embrace the bring your own device (BYOD) to work philosophy, the more deeply connected workers become to their workplaces, which exist on the same devices as their social networks and family photos.

Embracing the mobile workplace is increasingly compulsory. In its Tech Trends 2013 Elements of Postdigital, Deloitte projects a "mobile only" future to the global workforce.
Closer Collaborations
Collaboration used to happen in board rooms with whiteboards and bagels. Today, it's on documents being edited by multiple people all over the world at the same time. It's sharing screen data and chatting over video.

"Seventy-nine percent of people work on virtual teams," said Puskar. "What's interesting is that in most organizations there is a preponderance of using yesterday's tools."

And that's where the disconnect between the promise of the virtual workplace seems to fall short for most. When using the first generation of collaboration tools, workplaces sometimes miss out on the increased productivity offered by the newer wave.

Puskar related how he tested this theory with his own team during one of his weekly, 6 a.m. leadership phone calls. Instead of a conference call, he decided to switch to video.

"By leveraging video in a collaborative work environment, I took what was normally a 90 minute call down to 60," he said. "I could see where everyone was. They paid attention like nobody's business."

And it's more than just video that is bringing people together. It's also social media.

"Social media?" some companies may ask. "The thing we're not allowing access to?"

The surprising truth about social networks is that it fills the humanity gap many global workers feel in cold, impersonal email chains and conference calls.

Take the client of Ferrazzi's who witnessed the phenomenon herself. A home-based consultant of 20 years, she always felt something was missing in her relationship with her clients. Then, along came Facebook.

"She found that the ability to converse on a corporate social network with [her team] and to be able to text with them during conference calls and see them on video has enabled her to feel like people she's never met are some of her best friends," Ferrazzi said.

That's more than a warm and fuzzy outcome. Ferrazzi said one of the key predictors of employee engagement is whether they have a best friend at work. Even across the world, real relationships forming on social networks are making real impacts on productivity.
Unified Communications
So mobile communications are great, connecting via video is beneficial and social engagement boosts productivity -- doesn't that sound like an awful lot of digital clutter to keep track of?

It is. In fact, a McKinsey Global Institute study found that high-skill knowledge workers spend 19 percent of their average workweek searching for and gathering information. That's an incredible amount of lost productivity time.

"What this new generation of platforms is doing it pulling it all together," said Ferrazzi. "You get the information you need for the business moment you're in."

Puskar calls it a thought trail. This digital collection of data includes notes from conference calls, recordings of video conferences and every text conversation into a single stream that can be recalled at the click of a mouse.

"At the beginning of a recurring meeting, you get a picture of exactly where things stand, action item status, all relevant documents and emails," said Ferrazzi. "It's like the recap at the beginning of a television show. You quickly make the context switch and pick up right where the last meeting left off."

That's some real, measurable productivity. And when in human history has an increase in workplace productivity come hand-in-hand with an increase in workplace delight? Joy? Social connectivity? This is what makes the new generation of workplace collaboration tools so exciting -- they don't just make the new way to work more possible and productive. They also make the job itself more desirable.
A former downtown development professional, Natalie Burg is a freelancer who writes about growth, entrepreneurialism and innovation.

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How Technology Has Changed Workplace Communication

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Business doesn't happen face to face as often as some would like. With so many workers worldwide now working in virtual teams, many business relationships depend on technology. And that's not a bad thing -- as long they're using the right technologies in the right ways.

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From unfriend to selfie, social media is clearly having an impact on language. As someone who writes about social media I'm aware of not only how fast these online platforms change, but also of how they influence the language in which I write.

The words that surround us every day influence the words we use. Since so much of the written language we see is now on the screens of our computers, tablets, and smartphones, language now evolves partly through our interaction with technology. And because the language we use to communicate with each other tends to be more malleable than formal writing, the combination of informal, personal communication and the mass audience afforded by social media is a recipe for rapid change.

From the introduction of new words to new meanings for old words to changes in the way we communicate, social media is making its presence felt.

New ways of communicating

An alphabet soup of acronyms, abbreviations, and neologisms has grown up around technologically mediated communication to help us be understood. I'm old enough to have learned the acronyms we now think of as textspeak on the online forums and 'internet relay chat' (IRC) that pre-dated text messaging. On IRC, acronyms help speed up a real-time typed conversation. On mobile phones they minimize the inconvenience of typing with tiny keys. And on Twitter they help you make the most of your 140 characters.

Emoticons such as ;-) and acronyms such as LOL ('laughing out loud' - which has just celebrated its 25 th birthday) add useful elements of non-verbal communication - or annoy people with their overuse. This extends to playful asterisk-enclosed stage directions describing supposed physical actions or facial expressions (though use with caution: it turns out that *innocent face* is no defence in court).

An important element of Twitter syntax is the hashtag - a clickable keyword used to categorize tweets. Hashtags have also spread to other social media platforms - and they've even reached everyday speech, but hopefully spoofs such as Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake's sketch on The Tonight Show will dissuade us from using them too frequently. But you will find hashtags all over popular culture, from greetings cards and t-shirts to the dialogue of sitcom characters.

Syntax aside, social media has also prompted a more subtle revolution in the way we communicate. We share more personal information, but also communicate with larger audiences. Our communication styles consequently become more informal and more open, and this seeps into other areas of life and culture. When writing on social media, we are also more succinct, get to the point quicker, operate within the creative constraints of 140 characters on Twitter, or aspire to brevity with blogs.

New words and meanings

Facebook has also done more than most platforms to offer up new meanings for common words such as friend, like, status, wall, page, and profile. Other new meanings which crop up on social media channels also reflect the dark side of social media: a troll is no longer just a character from Norse folklore, but someone who makes offensive or provocative comments online; a sock puppet is no longer solely a puppet made from an old sock, but a self-serving fake online persona; and astroturfing is no longer simply laying a plastic lawn but also a fake online grass-roots movement.

Social media is making it easier than ever to contribute to the evolution of language. You no longer have to be published through traditional avenues to bring word trends to the attention of the masses. While journalists have long provided the earliest known uses of topical terms - everything from 1794's pew-rent in The Times to beatboxing in The Guardian (1987) - the net has been widened by the 'net'. A case in point is Oxford Dictionaries 2013 Word of the Year, selfie: the earliest use of the word has been traced to an Australian internet forum. With forums, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media channels offering instant interaction with wide audiences, it's never been easier to help a word gain traction from your armchair.

Keeping current

Some people may feel left behind by all this. If you're a lawyer grappling with the new geek speak, you may need to use up court time to have terms such as Rickrolling explained to you. And yes, some of us despair at how use of this informal medium can lead to an equally casual attitude to grammar. But the truth is that social media is great for word nerds. It provides a rich playground for experimenting with, developing, and subverting language.

It can also be a great way keep up with these changes. Pay attention to discussions in your social networks and you can spot emerging new words, new uses of words - and maybe even coin one yourself.

The opinions and other information contained in OxfordWords blog posts and comments do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of Oxford University Press.

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How social media is changing language - OxfordWords blog

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From unfriend to selfie , social media is clearly having an impact on language. As someone who writes about social media I'm aware of not only how fast these online platforms change, but also of how they influence the language in which I write. The words that surround us every day influence the words we use.

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by David Nield

The pace at which our gadgets and gizmos are getting more powerful shows no signs of slowing down, and recent leaps forward in technology over the last few decades have revolutionized the way we communicate with each other. At the heart of this revolution is the Internet, breaking down barriers of distance and cost to make us more connected than ever before.

The Web

The Web is at the heart of many ways in which technology has affected communication. It enables us to instantly communicate across the world for the price of a broadband subscription, which has had a dramatic impact on how we can keep in touch with family or do business with colleagues working remotely. While this has made it easier to make contact with others, it has also made it more difficult to switch off. Communicating with those we know is now much simpler and more convenient than it ever has been, at the risk of making our lives ever more hurried and busy.

Cell Phones

Cell phones and other mobile devices such as tablets have accentuated the impact of the Web. Not only are we accessible every time we sit down at a computer, we are now accessible from wherever we are. Our mobile phones enable us to communicate with hundreds or even thousands of contacts across a myriad of services and platforms with a few taps on the screen. It is no longer necessary to use face-to-face contact and speech to communicate - we can use short SMS messages, or leave a voicemail, or send a tweet from our phones. Again, the convenience offered by all of these extra channels is counterbalanced by the additional effort required to monitor them all.

Email

Emailing is the letter-writing of the 21st century, but it's so much more besides. It enables us to send short ideas or thoughts as well as lengthy missives, it enables us to send the same message to dozens of people at the same time, and it enables us to accompany our words with images, links and other files. Email, working on top of the Web, has made communication more varied and more flexible, giving us a range of new ways to spread information, flirt with prospective partners, make new acquaintances or apologize for wrongdoing. If we don't want to meet in person, or we can't, it's no longer necessary.

Social Networking

Social networking is all about sharing. It has transformed the way we share our photos, thoughts, videos and more. It has opened up new ways of communicating with our friends and family that in the past would have required setting up our own radio, TV station or newspaper. As with email and the Web in general, sites such as Facebook and Twitter (together with the associated mobile apps) enable us to communicate more quickly, more easily and more often. Technology has made communicating with others so straightforward and natural that it is often necessary to try and limit the use of these platforms and tools to avoid overload.

About the Author

An information technology journalist since 2002, David Nield writes about the Web, technology, hardware and software. He is an experienced editor, proofreader and copywriter for online publications such as CNET, TechRadar and Gizmodo. Nield holds a Bachelor of Arts in English literature and lives in Manchester, England.

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How Technology Has Affected Communication

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The pace at which our gadgets and gizmos are getting more powerful shows no signs of slowing down, and recent leaps forward in technology over the last few decades have revolutionized the way we communicate with each other. At the heart of this revolution is the Internet, breaking down barriers of distance and cost to ...