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My estimates show that America’s most widely-used drug is the infamous Instant Messenger (aka IM). This drug has lured in countless children, teenagers, and adults alike; yet, there have been no efforts to control it. I admit, I am a heavy user myself.

The side effects of this drug include (but are not limited to): sleep deprivation, loss of a real social life, time wasted, and most importantly – the one I will describe in detail – degradation of communication. Indeed, I wish the little, orange-person icon on my computer had never been born (but I am too weak to remove it).

IM Degrades Quality of Communication

I already experienced my phase of long hours on the phone. My parents would tell me that “back in their day” they would actually see a person when they wanted to speak to them, and telephones were reserved for urgent messages.

Apparently, they found it necessary to see someone’s facial expressions while speaking to them. Just as teenagers perfected the art of speaking to an invisible voice, they – including myself – decided to go a step further and “speak” to a voice that is also deaf and dumb.

Instant messenger teaches us to understand things only literally, because literal meanings are the most probable meanings of words. This is a result of the utter lack of human-produced tone and expression.

Of course, users often implement italics or capitalization to emphasize certain words, and those cute little “smileys” to generate a facial expression, but this is no match for the infinite variety of expressions people naturally create. This is a breeding ground for disagreements and arguments resulting from misinterpretation of words.

Social Repercussions of IM

Heavy users are likely to feel the repercussions of instant messenger with full force. These people become dependent on IM as their primary form of communication, and become inept at other social methods. They become so accustomed to interpreting people’s smileys and use of capitalization that they utterly forget how to recognize emotions in the less-distinct real facial expressions.

These people begin to have difficulty relating to people in non-Internet life. This inevitably causes problems when they run across the girl they’ve been “dating” in real, physical form at the supermarket.

IM also becomes a replacement for real social contact and escalates American antisocial “computer-geekism.” Case in point, a boy will tell his mother “I have plenty of friends – I’ve just never seen any of them.” Humans are social in nature, and require contact with other humans to lead happy lives. The replacement of internet-buddies for physical friends is worse than the replacement of corn syrup for sugar!

People simply lose the close connections they have with people who they can actually touch, hear, and see. Frankly, Suzy-who-is-seventeen-and-lives-in-Colorado (and is really a 50-year-old man who has has 52 feline friends) just isn’t going to care much when your hamster dies.

A Matter of Convenience

Of course, there is something to be said for the convenience that instant messenger has brought along. Yet, I think the harms outweigh the benefits. There is no excuse for degrading the human talent for communication by compromising it with a talent for typing. Whoever invented this drug has gained a successful following, and for this he/she should be ashamed.