In the 21st century, people tend to use social media in place of face-to-face contact to communicate with others, and it has both advantages and disadvantages. This essay will delve deeper into both sides of this tendency and explain why I am convinced that this trend is both advantageous and disadvantageous.
On the one hand, if social media supplants face-to-face contact, communication will become quicker and more convenient. When people exchange information directly, they need to assemble at one particular destination; this will consume a constant time for each person, and sometimes it takes very much time. By contrast, the use of social media can completely resolve this problem: people just have to send some messages via Messenger and Discord or have a voice call in Zalo to contact, there is no need to move elsewhere.
However, the realism of a conversation will decline significantly if we use social media instead of face-to-face contact. When AI technologies such as deepfake are developing rapidly, a person can fake their identification easily; then that person can fool many people to give him/her money or something like that. Meanwhile, these tricks are much more difficult to perform in direct contact, when a person can’t fake his/her identification.
Considering the aforementioned pros and cons, I firmly believe that social media should replace face-to-face contact in certain cases, but we shouldn’t do this in other cases. If a person has a lot on his/her plate, the utilization of social media can save his/her time. Conversely, if we have enough free time, don’t be afraid to communicate directly, because it helps avoid the potential that we are contacting a bad guy.
To conclude, I argue that the replacement is only good for some circumstances. While social media is helpful for busy people, it is important to have face-to-face contact whenever we have enough time.