With texting and updating statues become compulsive behavior, families often find it difficult to communicate even at the dinner table. Although technology can be disruptive to familial communication, it can also be conducive to families that live far apart.

Prior to the arrival of such services as Skype or e-mail, it would take weeks, if not months, for letters from the United States to reach countries like India, Colombia, or Germany. Often, it was cheaper for a recent immigrant to simply cut off all ties with his or her native land than it was keep contact with family in other countries.

The telephone and telegraph revolutionized the communications business and allowed families in different countries to stay closer together. In many cases, long distance telephone services and telegraph messages remained too prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of recent immigrants to use. Senior Khandaker Sadman believes that without communication families would do poorly, and said, “Without a means of communication and with such long periods of not traveling, I think family members might not entirely forget each other, but many of the details will disappear.”

Luckily for some, a new revolution has taken place in the communications industry, with web services such as Skype, e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter that allow for quick and instant communications between various countries. Sophomore Kirk Carmichael said, “Skype allows my family to talk in a more natural way as we can see each other as well as speak. Skype is free most of the time and it is easily accessible to all members of my family.” Nowadays, it is possible to speak face-to-face with one’s relatives in other countries as long as one has a wireless router and an internet connection.

Email and Facebook have allowed families to share experiences and memories that would otherwise remain in the memory banks of individuals. Senior Ashley Blonsick, who has family in Colombia, believes that communication is necessary for a family and said, “[Skype] helps us to be updated in each other’s lives and keeps us close even when we can’t physically be together.”

By creating a shared social media experience, technology companies are not only bringing individual families together; they also bring together the global community as one family with shared goals, dreams, and a communal interface with the rest of the world.