Telephone dies tragic death
by Lydia Brewer 
A deathly silence descends upon homes across the world…
The phone doesn’t ring any more.
The ringing telephone has been replaced with the clatter of keyboards and dull hum of computers.
It has been replaced by a myriad of social networking sites, text messaging and email.
The era of the land line is over.
As little as five years ago, people spent hours a day on the phone to their friends. Now, when you want to catch up with an old friend, you simply jump online and leave them a message: Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and old-fashioned emailing cater to this need for communication.
If it’s more urgent, you could send them a text message. But the last thing we consider doing is calling them at home.
Why is this?
A single phone call can facilitate the same conversation as one hundred text messages or MySpace posts.
In a professional capacity, we still readily use the telephone alongside new technologies like email to communicate with colleagues and clients. It’s faster, easier, and more intimate. But perhaps it’s the psychological distance of online communication that appeals to us.
While meeting someone you don’t know very well face to face can be relatively daunting, leaving an online message or sending an email is easier. You don’t have to speak directly to the other person, you can take your time constructing and editing your message, and you don’t run the risk of annoying them while they’re busy.
The internet is an altogether less invasive and less aggressive form of communication.
On top of this, you can portray yourself in whatever capacity you choose fit. Nobody needs to know that your profile picture is digitally enhanced, or that you haven’t really done all the things you claim in your “about me” section. You can be a more attractive, more confident and more successful version of yourself. Nobody will be any the wiser, until they meet you, of course.
But what kind of influence is this construction of identity having on our society?
If we all live in two social realms, one real and one virtual, which identity do we primarily subscribe to? The lines of reality and preferred reality are becoming increasingly blurred, and people are falling into the virtual personality trap.
Collecting copious amounts of “friends” or trying to stimulate activity on your profile are popular cheating tactics to appear virtually popular. It’s only a matter of time before people start seeing these insignificant cyber-activities as reflections of their identity, popularity and social status.
Or perhaps it’s happening already…