Online Communication

Online Communication

Communication via instant messaging and e-mail is far more effective than using the telephone or post office due to their speed of delivery and ability to simultaneously talk to many people. Instant messenger services have become very popular over the years, and there are currently 180 million registered users for AOL Instant Messenger alone. In some respects, e-mail is even more widespread-- people next door to each other and people across the world keep in touch and even conduct extensive business, simply by sending e-mails back and forth. There are also countless numbers of discussion forums on the internet, on topics ranging from anarchy to zoology. The internet has grown rapidly over the last two decades, and there are now a myriad of internet services available to the general public for free.

Anyone with an internet connection can register for an instant messenger account today. As long as a person has the means to get on the internet, there's no limit to what kind of instant messenger accounts they can register for. Ranging from AOL Instant Messenger to Yahoo! Messenger, it is possible to talk to anyone in the world with a computer. With instant messenger services, a person can talk to as many people as humanly possible with ease, while being on the telephone is restricting. When using instant messengers, a person can surf the internet, shop online and even read news articles while talking to as many of their friends as they wish. With the telephone, a person is limited to the amount of people they can talk to unless they are willing to pay the additional fee to talk to another person at the same time. Even then, the conversation is restricted to 3 people, unless the person on the other line is willing to pay another fee to talk to a fourth person. Do the math, 10 cents a minute for statewide long distance, an additional 75 cents per three-way calling, and talking to 4 people for 30 minutes, that would be a total of 10 dollars and 50 cents. Talking to friends and family that are far away is even more costly. Long distance charges across the country and internationally are not cheap and unless a person is willing to pay, keeping in touch is not an easy task. On the other hand, talking to friends and family using instant messengers is easy and feasible with no extra charge.

If it had not been for the internet, it would have been nearly impossible to talk to my friends that went to other countries for the summer. I was able to talk to my friend who went to Korea, and at the same time, talk to my friend who was visiting Japan. Furthermore, it would have been hard for me to keep in touch with my friends because I moved away after high school. If I had used the telephone to communicate with my friends, I would have had a lot of considerations to keep in mind. I would have had to consider tying up the telephone line for my family and theirs, long distance charges, privacy of our conversations, and the fact that adults sleep earlier than teenagers. My family uses the telephone quite often and it would not be a good idea to be on the telephone constantly. Long distance charges would also be very expensive and being a teenager, money is hard to make and even harder to keep. Most important is the privacy of our conversations. If we were to talk on the telephone, it is possible for a person to overhear what we say. Using the telephone late at night would also be very disrespectful of others. Teenagers tend to stay up later than adults, therefore using the telephone until two or three in the morning would be rude. Instant messenger services provide a better and quieter alternative to the telephone.

E-mail provides a faster solution to snail mail. People know that it takes a really long time to get mail sent from one place to another via the post office. With e-mail, messages are sent instantly without having to wait 3-5 business days or more. Writing messages via e-mail is also a lot simpler. If a person makes a mistake, all they have to do is go back and correct it, but if a person makes a mistake while writing, it would look messy to just cross it out and be more of a hassle to write it all over again. E-mail also has a lot of functions that come in handy. For example, spell-check is a great tool to have when writing messages. A message with correct grammar and spelling is always better and easier to read. Furthermore, options like mass mailing make it a lot simpler and cheaper to send things like invitations and announcements to people. The fact that a person does not have to put together a million copies of something would make things a lot less complicated. In addition to that, sending e-mail attachments saves the money that people would ordinarily pay sending the files through the post office. Sending attachments are also more diverse in the types of files that a person can send-- music, Power Point presentations, and more. People can also send e-mails at the spur of the moment, as opposed to writing a letter, once they write the letter they have to remember to send it. For some people, they write letters, but they never get around to sending them. E-mail has a definite advantage over snail mail in the numerous possibilities of things a person can do with an e-mail.

E-mail also provides reliability and security that regular mail can not provide. Even though it is possible to get a certificate of mailing, at an extra cost of 90 cents, there is no guarantee that the mail will get there unless a person is willing to pay even more for signature confirmation. The mail could get lost or delivered to the wrong place and one would not know about it until days or even weeks later. If something is lost in the mail, there is no way to get it back unless you make a copy of it beforehand. With e-mail, it does all that by design. When sending an attachment, e-mail is set to make a copy of the document, or any file by itself. Proof of sending an e-mail is also present by default and if an e-mail is sent to the wrong person or a non-existent e-mail address, an automatic response is sent instantly notifying the sender of the problem. After visiting the Unite States Postal Service website, mailing a one pound letter from Los Angeles to Goleta costs $13.65