In early 2009 Nielsen Mobile surveyed teenagers with cell phones. On average each sent and received an astounding 2,272 text messages per month. The national School Boards
Association estimated that high and middle school students devoted an average of nine hours to social networking each week. Add blogging, email IM, tweets and other digital time and you can see what a crazy hurried communication system people experience today. Nearly all of their communication tools involve the exchange of written words alone. At least phones, cellular and otherwise, allow the transmission of tone of voice, pauses and the like. But even these clues are absent in the text-dependent world. Users insert smiley-faces (emoticons) into emails, but they don't see each others' actual faces. They read comments on Face book, but
They don't "read" each others' posture, hand gestures, eye movements, shifts in personal space and other nonverbal—and expressive—beha
Back in 1959, anthropologist Edward T. Hall labeled these expressive human attributes
"the Silent Language." Hall argued that body language, facial expressions and stock mannerisms function "in juxtaposition to words," imparting feelings, attitudes, reactions and judgments in a different register.
This is why, Hall explained, U.S. diplomats could enter a foreign country fully competent in the native language and yet still flounder from one miscommunication to another, having failed to Decode the manners, gestures and subtle protocols that go along with words. And how could they, for the "silent language" is acquired through acculturation, not schooling. Not only is it unspoken; it is largely unconscious. The meanings that pass through it remain implicit, more felt than understood.

For Hall, breakdowns in nonverbal communication took place most damagingly in cross-cultural circumstances—for instance, federal workers dealing with Navajo Indians and misconstruing their basic conceptions of time. Within cultures, Hall assumed, people more or less "spoke" the same silent language.
They may no longer, thanks to the avalanche of all-verbal communication. In Silicon Valley itself, as the Los Angeles Times reported, some companies have installed the "topless" meeting—in which not only laptops but iPhones and other tools are banned—to combat a new problem: "continuous partial attention." With a device close by, attendees at workplace meetings simply cannot keep their focus on the speaker. It's too easy to check email, stock quotes and Facebook. While a quick log-on may seem, to the user, a harmless break others in the room receive it as a silent dismissal. It announces: "I'm not interested." So the tools must now remain at the door.

Older employees might well accept such a ban, but younger ones might not understand it. Reading a text message in the middle of a conversation isn't a lapse to them—it's what you do. It has, they assume, no nonverbal meaning to anyone else.
It does, of course, but how would they know it? We live in a culture where young people— outfitted with iPhone and laptop and devoting hours every evening from age 10 onward to messaging of one kind and another—are ever less likely to develop the "silent fluency" that comes from face-to-face interaction. It is a skill that we all must learn, in actual social settings, from people (often older) who are adept in the idiom. As text-centered messaging increases, such occasions diminish. The digital natives improve their adroitness at the keyboard, but when it comes to their capacity to "read" the behavior of others, they are all thumbs.
We might reasonably pose questions about silent-language acquisition in a digital environment. Lots of folks grumble about the reserve, self-absorption and general uncommunicativeness of Generation Y. The next time they face a twenty-something who doesn't look them in the eye, who slouches and sighs for no apparent reason, who seems distracted and unaware of the rising frustration of the other people in the room, and who turns aside to answer a text message with glee and facility, they shouldn't think, "What a rude kid." Instead, they should show a little compassion and, perhaps, seize on a teachable moment. "Ah," they might think instead, "another texter who doesn't realize that he is communicating, right now, with every glance and movement—and that we're reading him all too well."
Debating whether or not all these new advances in communication technology are good or bad seems to be the hot topic. Walking down the street to classes, I see a lot of students with their heads down looking at a phone screen with their fingers moving at a furious pace. We are communicating all the time, and not in the sense that “one cannot not communicate” by nonverbal expressions and the clothes we wear. People are interacting with one another twenty- four hours a day, seven days a week, on an interpersonal level.

Technology allows us to stay connected to everyone we know, ones we don’t, and some that we don’t expect to interact with again. One of the strongest ways technologies have shaped relational development and interpersonal communication is how people in long-distance relationships can stay in touch and continue to be in a relationship, be it friends or romantic
. Leaving for college was a stressful experience, especially in terms of leaving all of my high school friends behind and moving away from my girlfriend at the time. Facebook has provided a method to stay in touch with friends from home as we experience different things at different colleges across the country. When we do interact in a face-to-face (FtF) manner during holiday breaks, we’re able to talk about pictures posted of one another, and share in real-time those experiences when we’re not with them.
Social media has also allowed people to better be able to manage a greater number of friends and interactions with others. In an ever-increasing transient culture, especially in college, being able to stay connected to the multitudes of people one meets at a party or having the ability to share clarifications on certain topics while studying for an exam, technology has opened more doors than shut them.
Another way developments in technology have shaped interpersonal communication is
Expanding upon the social penetration theory and allowing people to explore the onion model in new ways. When on a date, face-to-face communication is nice, as we can see emotions and we trust, maybe more so than online, that the discussions are genuine and sincere. The problem with a date is that it has an expiration. With the explosion of text messaging and social media, a “date” can continue for a longer period of time. Technology, such as texting, allows people in a relationship to explore more topics, and once communicating face-to-face, they’re able to bring up the same topics and discuss in further detail and drill down to more core values of the topic.
Implications of the increasing use of text messages, in terms of romance, courtship, and uncertainty reduction, is technology doesn’t always provide an “end”, like a date does communicating in a FtF manner. After a date ends and continuous texting begins, there is no end unless someone stops responding or falls asleep. It’s a tough call, deciding on who should respond last or have the final say, even after one has said a final “goodnight”. The ability to fire off any random thought can be very powerful, both in terms of good and evil.