How do I communicatine through technology accurately?

A key character of technology is the changes it has made, and is still making, on the way we communicate with one another. Technology has made it so we can communicate with each other without face to face interaction, without voice and tone, and without instant replies. However it has also updated to allow face to face interaction while you may both be miles apart, allowed recording with voice and tone, and allowed instant replies.

We all know the social norms when interacting with someone in person, we learnt them as we were learning to talk. We need to make eye contact. We need to show positive body language, so not fold our arms, face them with our whole body etc. But how are we meant to transfer these social norms to the communication through technology?

For me, this has always been something I’ve struggled with. How to interact with someone over technology and be able to fully express what I mean. I believe when I first started attemping this through facebook messages, I failed. I am a very sarcastic person, and this is no easy thing to express through instant messaging.

I quickly leant the way I normally interact with my friends needed to change once we got home. As I grew older and interacted more and more with technology I had to adapt to the new norms. Learning the formatting of an email was easy, similar to one of a letter.

But what about a video call with a friend? Do I look vain and stare at little box with my image? Or do I feel like a creap staring into their eyes through a screen? Or do I not make eye contact and find a fixed spot in the background like I do a class speech?

Well my response was a mixture of all of these-something I would never do for a face to face interaction.

As technology continues to change and update so will we and our methods of communication. As this occurs it will be up to the users discretion to create the norms. This will be essintal in how useres behave ethically online to one another.