Giedrius Ivanauskas: is social media damaging our social skills?


Socialskills


Here is a new post from Giedrius Ivanauskas from Social Media Citizens and co-founder of the Social Marketing Forum. Are social media turning us into unmannered creatures?

Recently, I read an article on the Telegraph website, talking about research that suggests that “Mobile phones and social media are stealing our manners” and “damaging our social skills“. I think it’s nonsense.


Since the old days people used to express themselves more in writing than in any other form of communications. I don’t think it’s a confidence issue . In fact, I think it’s to do with politeness for some reason we as a society don’t find it so rude if someone writes bad about us compared to when someone says something bad.


People are so much more open and personal in writing, perhaps due to the fact, that they have more time to think what they put down on the paper and are not so impulsive.



Social disaster or social development?


When you think about how many times you regretted about something you had said, I bet that there were 100 times less when you regretted about something you had written.


Therefore, I think it’s even more real to me, what people write than what people say, because they always have chance to correct themselves and transfer their real emotion.


It is actually a paradox that we tend to say more in writing than when we speak,  but actually I think it’s to do with all this political correctness  and sometimes unnecessary  politeness which limits people expression.


Is it a social disaster or social development? I don’t know.


But living in the world of the fake smiles, I kind of enjoy straight forward language on social media sites.


What about you?


Giedrius Ivanauskas, the researcher of Social Media and Augmented reality, is a social media marketing expert that really gets the point.
He blogs on Social Media Today and on his own blog Social Media Citizens (that you can follow on Facebook here).
Giedrius is also an administrator of the Social Marketing Forum and its Facebook Page. You can follow Giedrius via Twitter here.




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