Communication is something to continues to occur, even if we are to aware or even preasent because like words actions send messages too. One to one communcation is the most common and the most intimate form of communication, it is more commonly none as interpersonal communication. I believe that technology such as email and texting have had a hand in changing the ways in which this sort of communication happens, and I blieve that this is for the better, not the worse. Without technology interpersonal communication would not be lost but the current generation would become less and less effective when it came to self-disclosure. Without self-discolsure in interpersonal communication how are we suposed to get to know each other?
Communication, whether we mean to or not we are always doing it both verbally and non-verbally and it knows no bounds, has no preset limits and never really stops. The intentions for which we use communication have yet to really change, however the medians in which we communicate have changed. Talking is the most fundamental and basic form of communication, but in modern days to person to person method has fallen by the wayside and one to many models have taken precedence as the dominate communication practices. First there where phones we used to call people and then we gained the ability to text people on our phones. Soon later came the internet which brought yahoo, MSN messenger, and AIM, and then even more recently MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. With each newer technology came an easier way to say hello, communicate and to self-disclose to strangers, employers, or even that cute girl you saw in math class. Whether for the better or for the worse I believe that with the developments of new medians it has become easier to engage in one to one communication as well as self-disclose to others... New media can be defined as the need, the want, or the use of on-demand access to content anytime, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community formation around the media content
Self-disclosure is the act of revealing the thoughts, feelings, aspirations, goals, failures, successes, fears, dreams of one"s self to another party. There are several types of self-disclosure but for this instance we will be focusing on how technology helps to develop relationships based on one on one communication. In the one to one communication model there is one sender and one receiver of information. Whether the message is to convey needed assistance, the offering of sympathy or expressing a lack of concern all these messages travel through the same medium. "Communication technologies allow us to interact with other people in various ways. Nowadays, using a cell phone (i.e., mobile communication) is one of the most pervasive modes of interpersonal communication" (Borea & Namkee, 2010) First with the ability to call anyone from anywhere cell phones extended the boundaries of voice, then soon after calling came the idea and the "need" of texting. There have been instances of people, most of which seem to be teenage girls, where people send thousands of text messages in the period of a month. An example of this would be an instance of Reina Hardesty, daughter of Greg Hardesty of somehow totaled 14,528 text messages in one month’s time, for a better figure this equates to a text every two hours. ( Cahalan 2009) This is a huge increase in the amount of communication taking place on a daily basis when compared to the basics of face to face communication. The more people communicate to one another the more likely they are to create a relationship and the deeper a connection made in a relationship the more likely one or both parties is to self-disclose to each one another. This is because self-disclosure continues to develop the more we talk with others and continues to build as time goes on. In the times before the mass popularity and necessity of cell phones for people it was difficult to build relationships with multiple people with such ease as where now it can take no more than a few clicks a few sends, and several replies and then quite instantly you are friends with someone you have never actually met. It is because of that very reason that helps to make new mediums easier to self-disclose, when you text someone you do not actually have to ever meet them, which can take factors such as nervousness and making a good first impression out of the discussion. To get a feel of how often this occurs with texting I put up some papers around campus stating just my name and saying that I was looking to make new friends and then my cell phone number, asking them to text me. What I was sent seemed to support my initial thoughts as in the period of a week I had gotten text messages from over a hundred people saying "hey" or "hi my name is____ nice to meet you" as well as some emoticons, and I am still receiving a couple texts a day in regards to this. (Cope, 2011) While I have not been able to talk extensively with many of these people it shows how meeting new people and the ability to establish a relation and self-disclose has gotten so much easier. Text messaging will continue to bring people into connection with one another as it will still be convenient, simple, and quick to use for some time to come.
Not only has the ability to go mobile helped people to create relationships but the growth of the internet has also played a major role as well. High speed internet has allowed for even quicker communication and quicker disclosure. E-mail was the first hint of this, as almost everyone now days has at least one e-mail account and use those account(s) to talk with friends, do business, and whatever else you could think of. Not long after e-mails came about came the dominance of sites including Facebook, MySpace, twitter, tumbler, and even YouTube, where the ability to share personal information as well as meeting new people, many of the people who fall into this category are college students. A study was conducted in a communications class at a large Midwestern university, the name of the university was not given, 492 students took part in this study, and of the subjects, 215 were male, 266 were female, and 11 failed to accurately indicate their gender. On the scales of one through seven, seven being strongly agree and one being strongly disagree, when asked if the students believed that they shared a lot of information on the internet the mean response the mean score was 5.219 with females having a higher score than males, it is likely that part of the reasoning behind this is that females are more prone to be emotional and or share their feelings than males are. (Punyanunt & Narissra, 2006)This can be seen with teenage girls and their Facebook pages, When looking at one of the pages one can see pictures, videos, phone numbers, other information conversations and much more. It is difficult to imagine that disclosure like this would be available without the aid of high speed internet. If we look at Twitter we can see the same type of information being shared but the difference being that Twitter is even more direct in its delivery as users can follow other members and then tweets from users are sent to those who are subscribed to them. While some of this has begun to go mobile high speed internet will also continue to make this type of communication occurring.
If we move past the text on the screen we can also notice that there are images and sound, when combines these two elements form video. Video often adds other elements that are lost with text such as sarcasm, humor and other emotions not transferable through text. The leading such person to person video chat application is Skype. Skype allows these registered users to communicate through both instant messaging and voice chat. Voice chat allows telephone calls between pairs of users. With its growing usage and popularity Skype has been purchased twice, first by eBay for 3.1 billion in 2005, and again this past June by Microsoft for 8.56 billion. (Bright, 2011) Bringing text, chat and video into one medium has brought the best of everything to one location. With video we are able to pick up on keys such as body language, gestures, eye contact, (McCornack, 2010) all of which help us to communicate more successfully. When this is combined with the portability of Skype we can keep in touch, conference call "Skype date" which is an event in which people contact each other using an internet phone calling program such as Skype. So even when people are thousands of miles apart they can learn about each other, share their time and connect.
However we wish to continue moving forward we will need to keep being able to communicate in order to build as well as sustain relationships. While we may not have the same luxuries that we currently do such as our internet communities and our free roam over the land with our mobile devices we will still have some creature of technology along for the ride to make one to one communication more prominent and self-disclosure easier. We have come far from the time when telephones were a rarity and the accessibility we now have lets us talk to anyone, anywhere at any time. This new way of doing things has been adapted by the current generation and will continue to be used as our primary way of establishing and maintaining our relationships. The language we have created in response to this well also continue to be used because if there is one thing universal about language it is that it will always adapt.
What I would like to do, I would like to establish my thesis statement being that, I believe that developments in technology and personal interface have made it easier to self-disclose to people of who we are unfamiliar with. With these continuing developments in technology, such as texting and Skype, that feats such as this will continue to hold true, and then form there build on my idea and to introduce through yahoo, MSN messenger, and AIM, and then even more recently MySpace, Facebook and Twitter and texting and try and talk about how they might have a greater impact on self-disclosure. for my body I would like to continue with this idea, the first idea would probably to cover texting as most everyone does it in some way shape or form and as something to get people familiar with the paper. From here I would like to focus more on going mobile but I would also like to go into other technologies that have gone mobile, rather than just texting or calling people with cellular phones. I believe I will go into something like a pole or something dealing with the thoughts of some college students in the matter of the subject. To all lead to a conclusion which will sum everything up and if done correctly will reiterate the point and emphasize it to the reader. Of course this will likely change as everything normally does.