Steve Stephens Cry For Attention

In today’s society it would appear that we are communicating more as time passes with the addition to social media into individual lives. With applications such as Twitter, YouTube, and Face book, people are able to communicate with people around the world almost instantly as well as see the things that are being experienced in other countries. However, even though this has somehow made the world seem a bit smaller, communication has not gotten better. Miscommunication is actually now more readily noticeable because of the amount of social media that is available. We begin to see the societal and cultural factors that lead to misunderstandings

“Social media is about sociology and psychology more than technology” says technology analyst and award-winning author Brian Solis. This quote is the basis of Snapchat and the exact reason to why it is the perfect app for teenagers.

In order for someone to define themself, it requires looking deep into their life experiences and determine what has helped form us into who we are. We cannot define our self by our others see us, but only by who we truly know we are.

“How is one to know and define oneself? From the inside- within a context that is self-defined, from a grounding in a community… or from the

It is truly difficult to understand self-concept and even more difficult to comprehend what kind of factors make up self-concept. However, we can take a quick glimpse at self-concept. During, my time in interpersonal communication, self-concept was simple defined as the understanding of who you are. I don’t think I have a perfect understanding about myself but I surly believe that I know myself enough to describe myself.

Facebook is an especially important social media site for me as it enabled me to find my birth mom after 10 years. While sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are very beneficial for things like finding old friends and relatives, sharing current events, and acquiring general knowledge about a person; it is important to look at the negative affects these sites can have on our view of reality and our view of other people's lives and characters. While scrolling through our social media site of choice we typically only see one side of a story. We only see the things other people wish to share with the world. This can damage our expectations of reality because we are exposed to only the best parts of other people's lives through their profiles, but everyone on social

Social media has opened the door to so many things that we never would have imagined. Working in the nursing field I have been exposed to situations I would have never thought possible. A woman left her husband because he was abusive and she was afraid for her life. Her daughter attended one of her school friend’s birthday party and the child’s mother not thinking anything of it she posted the picture on Facebook. The husband did have a Facebook page but his sister did and she saw the picture and informed her brother where the child was.

Baumeister gave the definition of self as “ The individual's belief about himself or herself, including the person's attributes and who and what the self is" (Baumeister, 1999).

The rapid growth of technology in our society has become more dominant than it was in the 17th and 18th century. Today, technology is used for almost everything in our day to day lives. But the most common usage of technology is for communication and industrialization. However, every good thing has its disadvantage if it is over used, and since technology has become very dominant, it is used by both young and older people but more predominant among the youth of the today. Even more, technology has brought about social networking such as Facebook, Twitter, my space, piazza.com, instagram, tango, and last but not the least texting. According to socialnetworking.procon.org, “47% of American adults used social networking sites like

Many believe self consciousness refers to how they can alter their image in the eyes of others, but to me self consciousness is understanding oneself, knowing your purpose in life, acknowledging your existence amongst others, as well as actions and decisions that have led you to this moment. In my opinion, definition of oneself has a lot to do with how you see yourself as an individual. In most cases one’s self image is greatly influenced by others, and or what they are taught to believe about themselves. What it means to define oneself is to pinpoint what makes you who you are as an individual with more reference to your mentality, emotions, attitude, intrinsic motivation, rather than physical appearance, and or social induced characterization.

Now that we are in the second decade of the 21st Century, it appears more and more evident that the so-called "Digital Revolution" is in a second phase. The first phase of the revolution was the rapid increase in digital technology as computers became cheap enough for most consumers to purchase at least one for the home and reliable enough that virtually every type of business incorporated computer systems into their day-to-day business operations. The second phase of the revolution occurred a few years after the turn of the new century, when applications such as instant messaging, Friendster, and MySpace became more and more popular, particularly among the youngest computer users. Today, computers are used even more widely for basic interpersonal communications, often replacing even the ubiquitous cell phone. Some of the most popular current trends in communications include FaceBook and Twitter, in addition to texting via cell phone instead of using cell phones for voice communications. In some ways, these new modes of communication represent responses to needs; in other ways, the media through which people choose to communicate are actually changing the nature of interpersonal and professional communications.

Self concept is the idea you have of yourself that is pretty solid and fairly unchanging over time, I thought this term was interesting because obviously everyone has a self concept but I thought it was unique how people don’t want to change their self concept even if the new perception would be better than the old one. Later on in the chapter it discusses the perceived self which mirrors the self concept, it is our belief about ourself when we are perfectly honest with ourselves, we don’t usually share this self with others because this is our deepest and most private perception of who we are, not the person we show the world.

Many cyber chats, although good for online communication however also has the potentials to cause emotional distress. Insults, profanity, humiliation and much more are some of the causes of which resulted many people to depression, suicide to ‘get out of this misery’. Through social networking, online reputations are being humiliated through verbal communications or offensive images that are being posted up onto social networking sites, such as Facebook. Chanelle Rae, a 14-year-old former student at Geelong’s Western Heights College, took her life on Friday the 17th of July 2009 in another cyber bullying incident, of which Chanelle’s mother, Karen reported to 3AW radio on the 21st of July 2009. Her mother reported, ‘she wanted to die because of the message that was given to her that night.,’ This highlights the fact that lives can also be lost while having the benefits of social networking on Facebook, Bebo, Twitter and much more. Thus shows that social networking can have a severe impact on many of our lives through what we say or post online.

The influence of social media and the boom in technology has effected human interaction and face to face socialization immensely over the years. Today, a large part of the communication that occurs between people, happens over text messages and social media innately influencing younger generations and their methods of interactions (Kim, Wang & Oh, 2016). Children’s social development is influenced immensely by this reliance on technology and constant use of technology to socialize creating a barrier in communication through human interaction (Lin, Chang & Chiou, 2017). The growth of technology though beneficial, also negates various risks, and will only continue to further change the way humans communicate with each other.

Just when we thought communicating with others could not become any more complex, most of us find ourselves engaging in forms of communication that we never imagined. Instead of calling our friends on the phone, we send them a quick text message. Rather than having face-to-face meetings, we are able to meet via webcam or video chat. As opposed to asking people about their days, we already know what they’re up to by “friending” or “following” them on their social media platforms. Despite all the change in communication patterns that has occurred within our own networks, advancements in technology have also changed the way we interact with people of other cultures and regions of the world. As a result of the number of technological innovations that have taken place, it has now become significantly easier to communicate with groups from different cultures, thus changing the way we understand and adapt to people of other cultures.