In the recent years, an active role of the social media increases. For instance, in 2016 there were 1.86 billion registered users on Facebook, 284 million people who use Twitter and 200 million users of Instagram. Such a high number of users not only allows to establish a quick connection between the users worldwide, keep in touch with friends from all over the world but also contributes to a rapid spread of information from one corner to the world to the other. At the same time, a growing number of digitalization changes the concept of face-to-face conversations and contributes to the diminishing of the face-to-face conversation in the cases when that’s appropriate. Hence, the impact of the social media is ambiguous.
On the one hand, social media help people to reconnect with one another from different corners of the world. In some cases, social media inspire the research on the changing social trends. Moreover, it helps to stay in touch with the individuals with whom you would be likely to lose connection after the first and maybe only encounter. For instance, while traveling elsewhere, a simple check-in on Facebook would easily connect you with someone you know from the city of your current location. Hence, social media facilitates the communication in many forms.
At the same time, people lose the value of communication. Social media causes dependence, and people are sometimes too focused on their image on the social media instead of paying attention to the ongoing conversation. Another risks originating from the social media result in the cyberbullying, hacking accounts and stealing the information. That is an essential side effect from the use of social media.
To sum up, there is no clear answer to whether social media kills conversations or not. It mostly depends on what people refer to the social media for.