Scientists continue to study the evolution of language and how humans, plants and animals communicate. There are still many questions to answer, and social media poses a new question on how we communicate and interact today.
“Social media has really affected the landscape of social interactions in many different ways that are hard to define and hard to understand in terms of their downstream effects,” says Adam Stern, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
It’s become a part of daily life for many, and Stern hears about issues relating to our online personas, how we interact in the real world and how the two intersect every day. Many people even sit at a table and gravitate towards their phones instead of communicating with each other.
Researchers and practitioners continue to try and understand how social media impacts us, including the pros and cons, while guiding us towards a positive use of this communication tool.