As a member of the graduating class of 2016, I was forced to say goodbye to countless friends with the impression that months would pass without our communication. It's a safe guess that many tears were shed in May, but how sad is it really when all I have to do is open Instagram to see their faces?
Saying goodbye to someone has become so much easier over the course of the past few decades thanks to modern technology, and the astounding evolution from letters, to phone calls, to email, to texting and social media. The iGeneration holds a growing list of things they take for granted; communication at the top.
To put things in perspective, let's travel back in time.
Alexander Graham Bell perfected the telephone in 1876, although it took approximately half a century for most people to accept its wider use. Anytime before this, the only means of communication were face-to-face interactions and the U.S. postal system. Saying goodbye held a much heavier weight because there was no way to ensure when or how you would meet again.
The next breakthrough that flooded the world of communication was email. Type up a message and it takes only seconds to meet the recipient, how incredible! Adopted by many businesses, it became a legitimate way to transfer important information from one employee to another. Some students also found it effective to keep a pen pal through email considering there was much less wait time in between messages. Modern day, most colleges use it to communicate with students and businesses with their employees.
The development of the cell phone altered the course of history and the basis of many human morals. A need for face-to-face conversations is shrinking, and the idea of handwriting a letter is nearly extinct. However, friends and families who reside miles away are now closer than ever. With features like Skype and FaceTime, homesickness is much less common, and the ease of keeping up with friends remains stress-free.
With the birth of faster, more advanced forms of communication came the death of personalization. Not much thought is put into a tweet, nor personality into a text. While texting is so much easier than writing a letter, we should value and respect that each of these tools has unique uses.
Appreciate your friends being a Snapchat away, but don't hesitate to write them a letter. There's nothing wrong with doing things the good old fashioned way.
