Member-only story
Is Social Media Compromising Our Professionalism?
It’s no great secret that social media was the new millennium catalyst to efficient communication. However the ever-growing trend of distant, black box conversing is paving the way for a lack of professionalism and accountability.
I, like nearly all of my peers, am present and active on social media. I use it to keep in touch with friends, communicate with other students for group projects, and promote events put on by the undergraduate research society I established. Without quick response systems like Facebook messenger and in-your-face photo platforms like Instagram, getting answers from colleagues would be daunting and spreading promotional material would be a nightmare.
Yet the terse nature of communication via social media is creeping into other aspects of life, and it may be holding us back. As a teaching assistant, I once received and email from a student simply inquiring “R U in ur office?”. This student will be graduating and seeking employment in just two years, and their professionalism was seriously lacking. Moreover, with spaces like Twitter enabling people to share views without facts to support their claims — or repercussions for uneducated opinions — group polarization is ever more prominent. False claims can spread like wildfire and lead to unwarranted mass panic. The anti-vaccination movement is just one example, albeit one with fatal consequences.
Social media has made it undeniably easier to accomplish collaborative tasks, but in this quest for efficiency we are also sacrificing our competence and liability, and I’m not sure if it’s worth it.
