Technology has evolved over the years and the area of communication is not left behind. We started with letters where you write a letter, send it to a post office, or you give it to someone to go and deliver it by hand and then you wait for weeks or even months before the letter will get to the recipient. The recipient will in turn write a reply which will take another weeks or months to get to you.
Then, there were no telephones and communication was by hand-written letters. There was a popular man in my community then popularly known as 'onye nkuzi' which means a teacher. He was the only one believed to be well educated or knowledgeable enough to articulate a well-written letter.
So if you want to communicate with your family members or loved ones in faraway lands, you will employ his service. You will communicate your message to him in the local dialect, then he will translate it into the English language and then compose the letter for you. When you get a reply too, you will call him to come and read the letter and interpret it for you in our language.
Sometimes I remember those days and I will laugh. One mind will tell me, what if that man was not writing or interpreting the exact intention of the messenger 🤔. And also how some vital and sensitive information was left at the hands of a middle man as well as the delays associated with this type of communication.
From here, we moved to the era of the telephone (landlines). This improved communication, at least you can talk to someone from a distance and get immediate feedback or response. However, there were still a lot of setbacks too.
We then moved to cellphones without Internet. I remember those first sets of cell phones that came to us. Those Samsung R220 with a tiny pole on the head 😀. Another one was Motorola, that phone was strong eh? We could literally use it as football and it didn't spoil. Then Alcatel, Sagem, and the rest. These were in vogue before Nokia came in with products like the Nokia 3310 which was as heavy as a big stone.
Though these phones didn't have mobile applications and all that, but we were happy to own a mobile phone that you can use anytime and anywhere. It also allowed calls and text messages and that was a great improvement in communication. I remember the first Nokia phone I used in my junior secondary school days, I was so happy.
I remember one guy in my class then, Innocent that was using Sagem MY X-5. The phone had features that could allow him to record a music for a few minutes which he usually plays in school during break hours. He was respected as a big boy in school then for owning such a 'sophisticated ' phone😀.
Then finally the android phones arrived for us which could allow us to do almost everything. Communication became superb and we could not only communicate with our families and loved ones in calls but in diverse means. These means include phone calls, text messages, video calls, chats, voice messages, etc. Of all these, social media chats have gained a lot of acceptance and still gaining more ground as a means of communication.
For someone like me, I have come to prefer chats to every other medium of communication. With chats, you can easily communicate with friends and colleagues even when they are busy, you can easily drop a chat with them which they can attend to at their most convenient time and this is what I love most about social media chats.
I can go days without making phone calls or sending text messages, but I can't remember any single day that has passed that I did not chat.
I have had a lot of good sides to social media chats and one significant good thing I have gotten from social media chats was information about an ongoing scholarship application. Some time ago, a message popped up in my chat from a friend regarding an ongoing scholarship application from my state scholarship board.
We continued the chat and he forwarded the link to me. I applied and completed the whole process. Luckily for me, I was shortlisted. I went for the interview and I was finally shortlisted among those that got the scholarship. This is important to me because all through the process, I never communicated with him on a phone call or text message. It was chatting all through.
He was a busy man. So I will just drop my messages on his WhatsApp and he will reply immediately after he comes online. That's one of the numerous good things that social media chats have done for me.
But whatever has an advantage also has a disadvantage. There has been some bad sides to the social media chats too. One of the instances was one day a guy dropped a message on a WhatsApp group that he sells mobile data at very cheap rates.
So I chatted him up. We chatted for a while. Even though I haven't met him before but I had confidence that he wouldn't scam me. So I decided to buy a data package from him. He immediately forwarded his account details to him and I sent him the money.
Immediately after he received the money, I tried chatting with him again and noticed that he has blocked me. I was shocked and angry at the same time. I sent him several messages and made several attempts to call him on the phone call but he already blocked all our means of communication. That one pained me oo, not only because of the money but how I was easily tricked into believing him. That was a bad side of chats that I have seen alongside other few instances.
So in conclusion, there are always two sides to everything. Even though there are so many wonderful things that social media chats can offer to us, there may still be some negative sides to it, especially on the issues of addiction. Some persons are do addicted to social media that they can chat from morning till night at the expense of their other responsibilities.
But in all, I see social media as another world just like our physical world. Therefore, we make it what it is. If we build trust and confidence in ourselves and also put the right attitude to it, the good sides of social media chats far outweigh the negative sides.
Thanks for reading and also wish to read your experience too.
