Do you remember as a child playing the game “Telephone”? Where you share a message and have to pass it on to your friend and they pass it on to their friend and keep it going? By the end of the last person, the message is all mixed up from the original context?
In this day and age, communication gets more easily misconstrued. With so much of communication and the media being today’s preferred choice in how things are relayed via technology.
The newer generation (Generation Z) seems to have been brought up with Ipads and cellphones and has a more difficult time understanding social cues and confusion can more easily arise. It is the day and age of emojis and text messages and DM’s on social media. The facial messages are left out, and up to the receiver to decide how they perceive the message or the call or the email they received. (Forbes)
The newer generation prefers digital and electronic modes of communication via technology. (Forbes) Older generations prefer the face-to-face connections.
There are advantages to both forms, and more advancements utilizing media and the new technology available to us all now, but misunderstanding can definitely take place a bit more easily like in the old childhood days of playing telephone.
References:
Vego, Julian. Forbes. “Generation Z and New Technology’s Effect on Culture.” August 31, 2019. www.forbes.com/julianvigo/2019/08/31/generation-z-and-new-technologys-effect-on-culture/#4007b1445c2a. Accessed March 26, 2019.
Tags: Generation Z, media, social media, technology, telephone
This blog makes a very valid point about the communication complications that are arising due to social media, messenger, and emojis. There are many important parts during a conversation that are nonverbal and need to be observed to accurately fully understand the context of the conversation. There is a term that relates to this called pareidolia- meaning people hear what they want to hear. This can be relevant to this blog post when dealing with social media communication vs face-to-face conversations when understanding social cues. Pareidolia could be a leading reason for misunderstandings and miscommunications between social media conversations. This could be misunderstood as prejudice when communication between two people is not clear and concise. Telephone is an interesting way to connect the lines between prejudice, pareidolia and the communication that is happening today, as it accurately represents how something can change while being communicated over many different platforms and through different people.