After getting countless joking snapchats of other people on their phone captioned, “What has this world come to?”, I thought I should write something about it.
Let me start by saying that I am guilty of constantly being on my phone. I know I’m addicted to social media because I can’t help but watch as many 15 second cute cooking videos as possible instead of doing homework. The first and last thing I do every morning is check Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in that order. Then I check my email for any other news that didn’t make it onto social media— and that’s my excuse: news. The fastest way for me to find out what’s happening in the world is through trending hashtags and my Facebook timeline. I also know that I’m not telling the whole truth by saying I’m just searching for news— I’m looking for selfies, like counts, retweets, and any sort of measurable form of acceptance and validation.
And I know that how awful that may sound; shouldn’t I be an empowered, intelligent, inspired young woman who knows that her self worth does not equate to how well liked my social media may be?
I know that too. However, I don’t think a lot of the older generation realizes that social media and forms of digital communication are an extension of my life. We have created something that captures instances, moments, but have been also given the control to choose what is shown to portray the best versions of ourselves. We have been given the allowance to communicate how we want to see ourselves, and yet, we’re chastised for it.
If you google “communication with millennials”, thousands of links to “The Secrets of Communicating with Millenials” and “Tips and Tricks to Communicate with the New Age” come up. We are speaking an entirely different language; it’s made up of emojis and gifs and dumb acronyms and a bunch of other confusing things that don’t come naturally unless you were born after the 1990s. And yet, we’re all using the same means of communication, regardless of when you were born, you most likely have a smart phone.
At WWDC, Apple recently released something that will change how we communicate even more than gifs or emojis. They’ve added new features to the messaging app— their most popular app on the iPhone— and they’ve included ways to better get things across, like emotional intention. I think what a lot of older generations fail to realize that millennials are empathetic both digitally and in person.
Maybe by handwriting a message on an iPhone millennials are able to put a personal touch, a throwback to writing and sending letters. Perhaps the new animated text feature allows us to get our words across more clearly, if not in a completely dramatic fashion. And of course, bigger emojis are always a plus.
We are currently in a very unique point in history; communication is shifting quite rapidly to innovative and reimagined messengers in ways that we haven’t been able to communicate before. Maybe I’m being too overenthusiastic. While some of these features may be silly add ons, I’m excited to be able to finally say what I want to say in the fashion I want to say it in. Interpreting text massages can lead to so much emotional distress and misunderstanding, and as millennials, we’re expected to be able to analyze and pick apart what’s real and what isn’t not only in direct messages but social media platforms as well.
So, Apple’s answer to, “What has this world come to?”, is simply a reimagined communication method to allow those of us that are emotionally intelligent to express how we want to say things in the most serious, funny, or silly way possible. Thanks Apple!