Essay Sample on the Effect of Cell Phones and Emails on Relationship and Communication

Communication is an important activity in business activities as well as in creating and maintaining relationships. With the new technology, communication has revolutionized the way people communicate and relate. The use of emails and mobile phones has in a great way changed the communication activities. There are many benefits as well as costs that are associate with the two technologies. The paper evaluates the effects of the two technologies on the communication and relationships in the society. The discussion can help make a conclusion whether the society has benefited from the technology overall.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

The use of emails in communication has made it possible to include rich content in the communication. In the past, individuals would just send plain text or voice speech that would be communicated through telephone or letters. The emails in modern life allow one to include videos, text, attached documents, pictures as well as music. This suits the business world where individuals may need copies of documents which can be attached as well as videos of events that are held by subsidiaries. In the private life, individuals send videos and pictures of themselves enjoying their holidays far away from their homes. The fact that emails offer the opportunity to send rich content has in a great way improved the way people communicate whether in the business environment or the private life. The mobile phones in the modern life are capable of sending rich content. There are various applications that are used for the purpose of sending pictures, attachments as well as videos. An example is the social media such as Whatssup that individuals can use to send pictures and attached documents. It should also be realized that email app can be embedded on mobile phone such that one can send and receive emails using their phones (Ling, 2011).

The use of emails has made it possible to send instant messages. The emails have the chat options in addition to the emails that reach every part of the world within a very short period. This is unlike the letters used in the past which required individual to wait for some days or months before the message was delivered. When messages are received instantly, it I possible to get immediate feedback and this means fast communication process. The use of mobile phones has also made it possible for individuals to get instant messages. Texting help one deliver the immediate message that is replied to immediately. This saves on the time that is required to pass a message.

Phones and email have made communication cheaper and now can connect people all over the world. Phones have access to the internet and this makes it possible for individual to use social media. Social media connects people who have never met each other before, and this has brought humanity together. People can go to any part of the world and can always keep in touch with their relatives and friends all the time because they have access to a cheap method of communication. Every minute, they can receive a message or call or even an email from their relatives from far away because it is cheaper to send and receive a message than before (Wright, 2011).

With mobile phones and emails, new relationships are created every day. This includes business relation a well as other relationships. This is because, through emails and phones, people get to social media where they meet people they would have never met. Once the relationships are formed, they can be maintained because people get to communicate daily any time when there is a need. People tend to share a lot when far from each other and this creates interest between the individual involved a well as some level of intimacy. It is correct to state that mobile phones and emails do not only lead to the creation of new relations but also helps maintain such relations (Turkle, 2011).

With the use of phones and email, it is possible to send a message to many people at once. One does not need to use many papers with same letter head to communicate to people. Instead, they can copy such emails to all the people that they need to communicate to. The phones also allow one to send one text message to many people. This in a great way saves the costs and time of having to write the same message several times and then send it to each person at once. This method of communication makes it possible for one to manage their businesses regardless of the distance because they can always give orders to their employees through messages that are sent through email or text messages (Turkle, 2011).

Regardless of all these benefits, there are many problems that are associated with the use of mobile phones and emails. There is a need to discuss these problems also. First, it is evident that emails and mobile phones now are the greatest distractors when it comes to communication. Mobile phones are carried to religious places, meetings, and classrooms. Email alerts are received in the middle of various events causing a distraction. Individual may receive an email, call or text that is disturbing in the middle of these important events and this may make them lose their concentration. In other cases, the mobile phones are the source of noise that distracts important events (Ling, 2011). This definitely hurts communication.

The increased use of emails and phones has made it difficult for the young people to learn important communication skills. People expect to work with others in the workplace, and it is known that most successful careers require individual who can create relations through effective communication. Since many young people spend most of their time using phones and do not get to meet with others face to face, the effects are that they have failed to develop important communication skills. During interviews, they fail to express themselves as expected, and this hinders them from securing jobs. These young people also meet people in their daily lives but because they are too busy with their phones, chatting with people they may have never met, they lose the opportunities they get to make new friends that they meet physically (Wright, 2011). This is a negative effect on relationships. Individual may also be in the same house but fail to communicate because they are busy on their mobile phones or on their email. This affects relationships adversely because individuals fail to know each other well.

Mobile phones and emails hurt the intimacy between relatives and colleagues hence eliminating the cordial relationship that would have existed if there was face to face communication. During face to face communications, people discuss more which may not be part of the message that may be intended. The physical expressions are also important in the face to face communication because one can learn the effects the messages have to others through the way they respond to the message. Facial expressions or change of tone tells the way messages have been received. However, use of emails and mobile phones eliminates the physical expressions that are present in a communication event, and this reduces intimacy. The absence of emotions in communication makes less effective. While the new technology may encourage people to be far away from each other regardless of whether the distance between them is short, messages that are communicated are distorted, and relationships end but being broken in the long run. Bosses who send messages or emails to employees instead of meeting them physically end up sending distorted messages. Relatives who just text and email each other without meeting physically fail to better understand each other and this leads to problems in relations and the results are broken relations (Park, 2010).

In conclusion, mobile phones, and emails have made communication cheaper regardless of the distance, and this has enabled individual create new relationships as well as maintain the current relationship. This is considering that they allow for instant messaging and sharing of rich content that is desired by the individuals engaged in the communication process. Individuals can send messages to many people at the same time, and this saves on costs and time. However, there are disadvantages of this technology because many young people are losing communication skills that are important in a physical environment such as the workplace. Additionally, the intimacy that is present in a face to face communication is lost when mobile phones and emails are used in the communication. Based on these observations, it can be observed that while there are benefits that are associated with the use of mobile phones and emails, the technology also has some negative effects on the communication activities as well as relationships.

References

Ling, R. S., & Campbell, S. W. (2011). Mobile communication: Bringing us together and tearing us apart. New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Publishers.

Park, J., & Abels, E. G. (2010). Interpersonal relations and social patterns in communication technologies: Discourse norms, language structures, and cultural variables. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.

Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. S.I.: ReadHowYouWant.

Wright, K. B., & Webb, L. M. (2011). Computer-mediated communication in personal relationships. New York: Peter Lang.