Face-to-face Conversations or Social Media
Nowadays, more and more people use social media such as Facebook and Instagram or other platforms. Obviously, social media plays an important role in our lives today. We have the access to get any kind of information at just a push of button. It is difficult to imagine our lives without social media today; however, there is a doubt about whether social media can replace our real world or not. Although social media and face-to-face conversation are both the access to connect with people socially, there are still some differences between them, including reliability of relationship development, expression of emotion, and continuation of conversation.
First, we often say trust is the foundation for people to get along with each other. In other words, trust is a lifeline to a relationship. When you get to know people with social media, you can easily know their background information through their personal profile. So, it is a convenient access to know people. Also, you don’t need to worry if you’re a shy person because you don’t have to talk with a real person, you just have to type on the screen. But is it enough to know people through the introduction they put on their webpages of social media or the pictures show their daily life? Well, sometimes people just only share the wonderful things on social media. Everything you know may be just a little part of them. Therefore, the perfect people you meet online may be your imagination, because you only know a part of their life, and you even don’t know what they look like in real life. However, when you meet people through face to face communication, maybe it would be more reliable. It is because what you know about them are more identical to their real life. You can know something about them not only from your daily conversation but also from their behavior. So, although chat with people on social media is convenient, but face-to-face conversation may be more reliable.
Secondly, the expression of emotion is also important when getting alone or chatting with people. And appropriate expression can make people know about the situation at that time. Nowadays, chatting online is a common thing for people. However, when you are chatting with people on social media, you can only see the words on the screen. And sometimes you may misunderstand what they want to say because you cannot see the additional meaning of those words in texting. The additional meaning means the emotional expression when you say the words. It’s kind of observable behaviors which communicate the internal emotional state. Those emotional expression includes the gestures, the body postures, the facial expression, the tone, and the eye contacts. You learn about the people’s personality by observing their emotional expression only when the person is in front of you. That is, meeting face-to-face can show each other’s emotion and also avoid the misinterpretation of the words through texting.
Last but not least, the continuation also plays an important role in communication. If you want to chat with people, the messenger in social media is a quite convenient tool. Because you don’t always have the time to meet the person you want to talk with in real life, but through the messenger, you can chat with people anytime and anywhere. Nevertheless, sometimes you can’t get the response immediately, but you can do nothing when you meet this kind of situation, you just have to wait for the message. On the other hand, if you talk with people face to face, there would be a continuous conversation because the person you chat with is in front of you. You can get the feedback or response immediately. And the conversation would be more interactive as well. It’s true that we do need to talk or connect people online because we are not available to talk in person every time. However, it is a torture for some people when they are waiting for the message. Therefore, if you want a high quality conversation with the continuation, face-to-face conversation would be better for you.
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In sum, we can know that there are some differences between social media and face to face communication including reliability of relationship development, expression of emotion, and continuation of conversation. Both social media and face to face communication have their own advantages and disadvantages, there no the right answer about which one is better than the other. It all depends on the different situation and different person since everyone has different needs and preferences.
Reference
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