Mabry 1 Amber Mabry Pratt English 1102 12 April 2013 Will You Please Look at My Eyes?

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. These are the little things that come together to form what we like to call social media. Whats the big deal about social media anyway? Well, its a lot bigger of a deal than you think. Thus far in my research, Ive come to find out that all of these social medias have formed little monsters out of all of us. Lets take a look into our lives for a second. How many conversations do you have a day? Out of those conversations, how many of them can you actually talk to the person with direct eye contact? Not very many of the conversations right? I very much believe that being on social medias have a very big impact on having a face to face conversation with someone. After being on a phone or looking at a computer screen all day, it makes people less likely to want to talk to other people face to face, making it awkward for them when they actually have to. 93% of teens (12 to 17) use the internet. Of this 93%, 73% have a social network (Reich 357). Take a minute to really think about that statistic. That is a lot of kids that have some kind of social network. Then think about the fact that kids spend 3+ hours a day on any given social network. Between that, school, and other activities, that doesnt leave that kid very much time to just sit down, relax, and have a conversation with someone.

Mabry 2 Heres another question; how young is too young to have a social media account? About a week ago, I was minding my own business walking through the mall when I noticed two younger girls hanging out. I would say they were around the age of about ten or eleven. Everything seemed to be perfectly normal about them until I noticed that they both had cell phones. I thought to myself what girl that young needs to have a cell phone? I was interested to see what they were doing because they were both so concentrated on the task at hand. So naturally, I walked passed them and peeked at their phones. They were both on Facebook. 8- to 18-year-olds who spent more time with media reported being less content (Pea 328). Personally, I think that its sad that both of these girls being as young as they are couldnt even hang out with each other because they were both caught up in something completely different. They were alone together. I started thinking about the fact that if these girls are already starting their lives living on their cell phones, what is it going to be like when they have to apply for a job and they have to talk to the boss directly. Is that going to be hard for them to do? I think that its going to be hard for them to try and create some kind of relationship with their boss/coworkers if they cant even make good eye-contact with them. Relationships. Now thats a tricky subject. Because interactions that occur via a screen often lack face-to-face cues such as gestures, gaze, voice, and other body language cues, online communication may be less rich than traditional face-to-face interactions. Online contexts also allow users to interact with much larger numbers of people than offline contexts. Thus, it is possible that the opportunity to interact with a variety of people, in a potentially less personal way, may provide fewer opportunities for more intimate interactions and consequently interfere with the development of close connections (Reich 357). I think that nowadays, a lot of people try to create relationships on the internet with people that they dont even know. They talk online

Mabry 3 for weeks and sometimes months, but when they finally talk face to face its awkward because they havent had to do it. An increasingly common scenario involves initial introductory contact via computer mediated communication (CMC) which leads to subsequent face to face (FTF) contact. Thus our very first contact with an unfamiliar person is increasingly occurring not in a FTF meeting or over the telephone, but via CMC (Markovitzky 359). In todays society I think that this kind of behavior is very typical. It is viewed as being completely ok. Personally, I believe that you cannot find a real relationship through a social networking site because I dont think that its real. When you get into a relationship, you should be able to talk to each other like youre best friends, but I feel like with an online relationship, you wouldnt be able to do that. One thing that a lot of social networkers have a hard time with is just being their selves. Online, they can be a big, brave, bold person, but when you talk to them face to face, they wont make eye contact with you, they get really distracted, and they seem to be somewhat stressed out. Most people that spend a lot of time online tend to pick up social anxiety. The reason for this is because they spend so much time on the internet because they feel like they cant get rejected or made fun of. But that they forget what its like to be around people, causing them to be very stressed out. Kiesler, Siegel, and McGuire (1984) suggested that the elimination of nonverbal features of speech, physical scrutiny, and pressure for real time response would reduce concerns over social rejection, which is a primary focus of social anxiety (Markovitzky 360). 3,000 friends; only knows about six. This statement is very true for a lot of people today. We have become so addicted to Facebook, Twitter, etc. that we gain all of these friends that we dont even know. It becomes more of a popularity contest than an actual friend site. Out of all of your friends on any given social networking site, how many of them do you actually talk to or actually know well enough to sit down and have a face to face conversation with? Probably not

Mabry 4 that many. I believe that we gain so many friends/followers that when it comes time to actually talk to our friends in real life, that we forget how to do that. Not only does this affect our friends, it affects our families too. I like to go and sit with my grandparents and just talk to them. The way that they were raised, it was considered ride if you didnt make eye contact while you were talking. Naturally, I was raised the same way. A lot of them time, the older generation deems our generation as being rude because we dont know how to make proper eye contact with them. I believe that to a certain point, this can be very true because we spend so much time on social networking sites that we dont have to make eye contact with anybody because were just staring at a computer screen. After thinking about all of these people and their bad habits on social media, I started to wonder about my own. Personally, I believe that I am very much addicted to my cell phone. It is always on me everywhere I go. When I dont have it, its really weird. To avoid awkward situations, I pull out my phone and just so I can text someone to make things less awkward with someone. For instance, one day I went out with my sister to the mall. She is what we like to call a shopaholic. She takes forever in the dressing rooms. So naturally, while shes in the dressing rooms, my first reaction is to pull out my phone and text or play a game because I dont just want to sit there and do nothing. The only difference about me and everyone else is that I know how to make eye contact with people while I talk to them. Since I learned at a very young age that eye contact was not only good to use but it was a sign of respect, it is embedded in my head that making eye contact with someone while talking to them is a must. Awkward. What a funny word. A funny word that we use a lot these days. I use this word at least 20 times a day if not more. Why do we use this word so much? Why has it become such a huge word? Lets just think about it for a minute. Imagine this; youre sitting with your friend

Mabry 5 at a pizza place. Youre just sitting there enjoying your nice cheesy pizza when you realize that you have absolutely nothing to talk about. So what do you do? You pull out your trusty cell phone and start texting or looking at whats new on Facebook. Why do you do that? Because you feel awkward just sitting there. We live in a generation where Facebook and Twitter have completely taken over. You cant seem to have a normal conversation without bringing up Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any social media network for that matter. What has this world come to? All in all, I think that social medias have become an addiction for many people and it causes them to become someone that theyre not. It can have a very big impact on your life if youre not careful with them. Dont abuse the privilege of social medias, and actually take the time to go out and talk face to face with your friends and family. In the long run, I think that this will help all of us to become better people.

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Works cited
1. Reich, Stephanie, Subrahmanyam, Kaveri, Espinoza, Guadalupe. "Friending, IMing, and Hanging Out Face-to-Face: Overlap in Adolescents Online and Offline Social Networks." 48. (2012): 356-68.EBSCO. Web. 6 Mar 2013. 2. Markovitzky, Omer, Gideon Anholt, and Joshua Lipsitz. "Haven't we met somewhere before? The effects of a brief internet introduction on social anxiety in a subsequent face to face interaction." (2012): n.pag.EBSCO. Web. 9 Mar 2013. 3. Pea, Roy, Clifford Nass, Lyn Meheula, Marcus Rance, Aman Kumar, Holden Bamford, Matthew Nass, and Aneesh Simah, Stillerman Benjamin, Yang Steven, Zhou Michael. "Media Use, Face-to-Face Communication, Media Multitasking, and Social Well-Being Among 8- to 12-Year-Old Girls." 48. (2012): 327-36. EBSCO. Web. 6 Mar 2013.