The Influence Of Online Communication

Over the years, technology has made great advances on the way people communicate and these devices have been naturalized as they are present in people’s everyday lives. Originally, people used to communicate using the telegraph, then it was replaced by the telephone. Nowadays, cellphones, email, video conferences and the Internet top the list of preferred communication methods. In the last years, the increasing use of social media has become a subject of primary interest in the whole world questioning online interactions, the type of communication it establishes and mostly important, the degree of strength of the bonds tied using social networks. Certainly, social media has been considered a double-edged sword and up to now, a worldwide debate

It is true that online communication needs Internet for its effectiveness thus, people are required the access to computers that can be networked using modems and telephone lines. Still, if there is access to Internet, the fast developed digital communication allows people to share and communicate with people from different areas, without boundary, as there is no geographic limitation. Nowadays, people have access to specific data regarding the number of users which use Internet worldwide. With just one click, Internet Live Stats, an international team of developers, researchers, and analysts make statistics available in a dynamic and time relevant format to a wide audience around the world. Their results show that 40% of the population has an Internet connection while in 1995, it was less than 1%. Indeed, the number of internet users has increased making the third billion users in 2014. Internet, and especially social media, has developed such an enormous power that it has been a very helpful and essential tool when it comes to reconnect with old friends or relatives that live far away. Such is the case of two Chinese sisters who reunited after 73 years. Ai, 81, and Li, 79, were separated in 1943 when Li was given away at six years old. She was later sold onto a

Considering that some people spend too many hours a day using their social networks only to check social network updates, it is understandable to think that not so many people will use their social networks to share worldwide information. People nowadays tend to put themselves first and their aim, sometimes, is to see an upsurge in popularity of their blogs, accounts, channels, etc. where the number of followers, likes, retweets, subscriptions increase. For this type of people, reading and sharing the latest news on their social networks may not be their focus. Yet, social media can be one of the most effective tools for approaching important information to people, as through the use of these devices breaking news and other important information like weather alerts, or missing children can spread like wildfire on social media sites. On a research done by Pew Research Center, how American adults use Twitter for news was discussed in detail. Michael Barthel and Elisa Shearer, both researcher analysts focused on journalism research at Pew Research Center and authors of this research, arrived at the conclusion that 54% of users tweeted at least once about news in a period of 4 weeks. Certainly, individuals are given the ability to disperse information efficiently to a mass audience with little time and effort where information