It’s times like these when we look at ourselves and think what are we doing? How has the internet changed us both psychologically and in the way we communicate? When we do this it’s important to not become overly critical and try to keep light hearted approach to it so as not to offend anyone. I try to be satirical if anything when doing this and usually speak lyk dis 4 itz beter 2 comunicat on da networkz. That being said, as I troll through my own Facebook page I am literally crying over my own stupidity as a 14-16 year old.
Conversely however, I remember my mother’s first reactions to Facebook. Firstly she doesn’t come close to use it half as much as me, but she does use it to “play [her] games” and secondly she apparently only got it to spy on my brother and I rather than as a tool to communicate with friends and family. Initially she admits she was practically frightened of it which is explained by the way humans initially interact with technology (Baron, 2008). Naturally and with more exposure however she has become more “reliant” (I’m not sure if reliant is the word) on the technology to interact with parts of her family and friends that do not lives within an hour or so radius of where we live.
 Back to me, and again trolling through my own Facebook page, I can see why some people dislike people bringing up parts of their past. My posts and images reek of immaturity, terrible spelling, grammar and quite invalid or misplaced opinions. As universal access has increased in the developed world (Baron, 2008) and more people around me in my social circle, friends, family, university peers, work mates etc have gotten Facebook, I have had to incredibly moderate what goes on my social network sites such as photos, statuses (such as drunk selfies etc). In a smaller group of maybe just friends, I would not worry so much about what people can see or I’d do what I do now and pass most of what I post off as satire, sarcasm and facetiousness. Have you ever put something you’re hesitant about people seeing on social networking?
 Misunderstanding is become increasingly prevalent through social media as the lack of social cues and non-verbal language are frequently omitted from conversation. Personally I’ve had confusing parts of relationships caused by what I now believe is the lack of vocal tone, facial reactions and other non-verbal features that have failed to properly transcend from face to face to telephone and finally into social networking and text based conversation (Baym, 2010).
 Now I see people trying to substitute these lack of non-verbal interactions by ways such as countless emoticons, acronyms and more recently since Facebook has introduced photo commenting and other similar things, actual photos of reaction faces (usually selfies that are meticulously looked over in some cases) which can also be seen on services like Snapchat. Lastly I have also noticed that in my group of friends the general standard of spelling and grammar has also increased, whether because my friends are growing up or because social media culture has brought on the change remains to be seen.
References
Baron, N. (2008). Chapter 1 : Email to Your Brain : Language in an Online and Mobile World . In N. Baron, Always on : language in an online and mobile world (pp. 3-10). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Baym, N. K. (2010). Chapter 3: Communication in Digital Spaces. In N. K. Baym, Personal connections in the digital age (pp. 50-71). Cambridge : Polity Press.
