Effective communication skills are critical to positive human relations and serve a principal role in social development by enabling conflict resolution and understanding. However, before completing this course, I was not conversant with the implications of my conversation habits and how my approaches to interacting and connecting with others using online technologies influenced my relationships. Initially, I believed that communication software and devices were intended to foster social bonds and meet new people from all over the world. As a result, I rarely communicated with the people who were closest to me including my peers, parents, and family members. My beliefs and attitudes on the role of communication technology significantly interfered with the quality of my relationships, especially with my parents, and prevented me from developing meaningful relationships with my classmates and peers.
My attitudes, values, and beliefs about communication technology behaviors influenced various areas of my personal development. In particular, my approaches had the greatest impact on relationship initiation and development since I obtained skills that allow me to comfortably converse with strangers and communicate with others. For example, I was quick at making friends on campus and I enjoy talking to others without necessarily having something in common.
However, these approaches harmed my ability to maintain relationships since they do not promote long-term attachments and continuous conversations. Although I meet and talk to a lot of people, I rarely contact them or converse with them occasionally. Hence, this habit limits me from interacting with those close to me and maintaining strong bonds. On the other hand, my communication beliefs, habits, and attitudes had negligible effects on my relationship dissolution as I have always experienced hardships in breaking up personal relationships and arguing with family members or friends.
The Implications of Communication Technology on My Relationships
I believe that communication technology has deteriorated my relationships but helped me to possess effective communication skills. Communication technology has hindered my relations with individuals around me since I am more inclined to talk to people online and maintain brief conversations. More specifically, conversing with people online allows me to sustain shallow conversations and insignificant discussions meant to catch up and pass time. As a result, I find it difficult to engage in sensitive dialogues that obligate emotional expressions and personal experiences. For example, I remember being extremely uncomfortable in a high school class discussion that featured domestic violence. My parents were going through a rough patch during the time and I did not want to share the information about their arguments with anyone I knew. Therefore, my habits have prevented me from seeking help when I should and establishing personal relationships by sharing issues.
Analysis of a Key Relationship
The relationship that I would like to analyze using online communication concepts is my bond with my mother because we have suffered through several adversities. I have fostered strong bonds with my mother over the years because we share a lot of experiences. However, my pursuit of higher learning has diminished the quality of our relationship over my period of study, which is against my wishes. One of the main reasons why I believe our conversation patterns have changed is because of a shift in our mode of communication (Mason & Carr, 2022). Initially, we used to keep in touch and interact face-to-face because I met her after school. Nevertheless, these days we hardly meet, thus obligating us to communicate using technological solutions. Therefore, the social presence and social information processing theories of online communication are relevant for this case and can offer guidance on the best solutions to build a better long-distance relationship.
The social presence theory of communication can help me establish a better relationship with my mother because it disqualifies the effects of long distance. The theory proposes that presence is a psychological attribute and a state of mind. Therefore, individuals’ use of technology can mimic the real world as long as they experience the psychological effects that come with real-life communication (Kahlow et al., 2020).
Nevertheless, most individuals do not associate online communication with reality, thus limiting them from experiencing associated feelings or body reactions and establishing lasting bonds. On the other hand, the social information processing theory explains that people can establish interpersonal relationships online like in real-life using verbal cues. However, this concept suggests that building a lasting relationship online takes a longer time than in face-to-face conversations (Davis & Agrawal, 2018). Thus, these theories can inform my understanding of my relationship with my mother and how I can improve.
I rarely use communication technologies to sustain personal relationships and keep in touch with the people close to me. Therefore, I do not engage with my mother as I used to because of my habits in online interaction. Although we speak occasionally, our conversations are not as deep and are often unsubstantial. On that account, my usage of these technologies in sustaining my relationship with my mother has been unsuccessful as we are continuously drifting apart. For example, my mother has been pressuring me to introduce her to some of my friends and potential future mate, but I always postpone her demands for another time. In addition, I dislike communicating using mobile devices when I am busy, which sends out a message that I am ignoring her. As a result, my communication attitudes and habits have resulted in various arguments and destroyed the loving relationship we once shared.
The use of communication technologies makes information exchange complex because they do not reconcile individuals’ situations during the time of communication. In other words, people who are some distance apart have varying experiences and may be facing issues that interfere with their ability to effectively communicate or engage (Tseng et al., 2019). As a result, an individual may misread or misinterpret particular word cues, thus leading to misunderstandings.
The media richness theory proposes that different forms of communication and media possess different capacities for relaying information as it is sent to the receiver. Particularly, face-to-face interactions are rich in passing information compared to solutions like texts because they incorporate several other cues such as body movements, facial expressions, and gestures (Ishii et al., 2019). On the other hand, communication devices can be less effective in transmitting information due to their reliance on verbal cues. Thus, these factors can hinder effective communication and personal relationships.
Proposed Applications and Strategies
The quality of my relationship with my mother has significantly deteriorated due to ineffective communication and fewer interactions. Therefore, I plan to change my approaches to conversing with her and the communication technologies I employ to foster more realistic conversations and information exchange. For example, the social information processing theory supports that individuals can establish strong bonds and meaningful relationships using verbal cues as long as they spend more time communicating (Kahlow et al., 2020). As a result, I will make an effort to always speak to my mother every day and every time I get a chance so that I can enhance our connections. In addition, I plan to offer more information during our conversations to realize an emotional attachment and trust (Masur, 2018). Nevertheless, it would not be advisable to occasionally share bad news over the phone since it can diminish the quality of the relationship. Thus, staying positive and developing the relationship will allow us to maintain our bonds.
The adoption of verbal cues in online communication can result in misinformation and misunderstanding. Thus, I intend to alter the solutions I use to keep in touch with my mother so that they can mimic real-life conversation scenarios and allow more expression. The media richness theory supports that face-to-face communication is more effective than other solutions for passing information (Tseng et al., 2019). Therefore, I will make time to engage with my mother using video streaming apps and live chatting social media solutions since they enable more lively interactions. These approaches will enhance our understanding of each other and encourage a feeling of presence, a critical attribute of human relationships.
Effective communication is the key to long-lasting relationships because of its ability to foster strong bonds. Therefore, adopting the strategies mentioned above in other interpersonal interactions online can help me build more meaningful relationships with the people around me. For example, most individuals are unable to sustain their relationships because of feeling disconnected from one another (Masur, 2018). However, strategies like using live chatting media to converse and keep in touch can enhance the feeling of presence, enable more understanding, and help individuals establish a stronger connection. In addition, applying the concepts of the social presence theory will enable me to associate my interactions online with real-life scenarios to trigger the feelings and emotions that accompany face-to-face conversations. Hence, these approaches will help me to initiate, improve, and sustain my interpersonal relationships.
Initially, I believed that online communication solutions, social media, and mobile devices were intended to interact and keep in touch with individuals far from our reach. As a result, my attitudes toward online interactions were inclined toward brief conversations that do not hold much emotional weight. However, on completing the course, I discovered that online communication technologies are critical and beneficial in sustaining all kinds of relationships because they keep people connected as in real-life communication. Therefore, my attitudes have shifted because I now perceive online technologies as an unmatched solution to staying engaged with many people without necessarily having to meet them and interact with them.
Communication theories such as the social presence theory propose taking time to build relationships using online communication technologies. Thus, its concepts have influenced me to spend more time talking to people and sharing experiences with them. Similarly, social information processing and media richness theories are critical in informing individuals of the role of cues and emotional presence in online conversations. Hence, the course ideas have altered my approaches to using online technologies to build meaningful relationships.
References
Davis, J. M., & Agrawal, D. (2018). Understanding the role of interpersonal identification in online review evaluation: An information processing perspective. International Journal of Information Management, 38(1), 140-149. Web.
Mason, A. J., & Carr, C. T. (2022). Toward a theoretical framework of relational maintenance in computer-mediated communication. Communication Theory, 32(2), 243-264. Web.
Masur, P. K. (2018). Situational privacy and self-disclosure: Communication processes in online environments. Springer.
Ishii, K., Lyons, M. M., & Carr, S. A. (2019). Revisiting media richness theory for today and future. Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies, 1(2), 124-131. Web.
Kahlow, J. A., Coker, M. C., & Richards, R. (2020). The multimodal nature of Snapchat in close relationships: Toward a social presence-based theoretical framework. Computers in Human Behavior, 111, 106409. Web.
Tseng, F. C., Cheng, T. C. E., Yu, P. L., Huang, T. L., & Teng, C. I. (2019). Media richness, social presence and loyalty to mobile instant messaging. Industrial Management & Data Systems. 119(6), 1357-1373. Web.