Instant coffee. Instant noodles. Everything’s instant these days, including communication.

Virtual communication is deleting barriers and making distance irrelevant. With texting, e-mail, and social networking sites, communication is just an instant away.

Facebook, with its 69 million members, allows its users to update everything from mood fluctuations, to relationship statuses.

Amber Richardson, junior health promotion major, said Facebook is like her “connection to the world.”

“I communicate with friends, family and teachers,” she said. “It’s very helpful to communicate with them [teachers] when I can’t get to their office during the day.”

Cassandra Jane, freshman mass communications major, said she uses the site about five hours each day.

“Everyone has it [Facebook],” she said. “It’s a great way to keep in touch with old high school buddies and new college ones. Not only that, it is a place to express yourself, through joining groups.”

Such groups allow students to talk about shared interests ranging from foreign languages to a common love for Starbucks. But, students aren’t the only people with Facebook accounts.

“I use Facebook because the students use it,” said Kelly Larson, director of forensics and associate professor of communications. “They are more apt to start a discussion topic or reply to a …

question on the Facebook Web site much more quickly than Blackboard, for example. That has been my experience.”

Though virtual communication is easy and quick, it can also be considered impersonal. John LaSage, founder of FutureForAll.org, thinks that this advancing form of interaction lacks the satisfaction of traditional communication.

“There is so much more to communication than words or pictures, but this is how I feel many people prefer it,” he said. “It’s easier. For example, a shy person who would normally not be comfortable in social situations could be Myspace legends.”

Web sites like FutureForAll.org predict that virtual communication will only grow easier.

With developments in 3D imaging, “virtual presence” may even allow individuals to project themselves into a room from across the globe. But, with that ease comes less face-to-face interaction, says LaSage.

“My opinion is that virtual communication has, and will continue to, decrease the amount of face-to-face communication, and that this has positive and negative effects on society,” he said. “The positive effects include speed and ease of use, access to more people and mobility. Negative effects include impersonality and communication overload.”

When it comes to college students, LaSage thinks they’re missing out on something important when they log onto Facebook.

“It is the personal interaction with other students, as much as the education, that makes a college graduate better prepared for life and career,” he said.

Though Richardson enjoys the convenience of what virtual communication has to offer, she agrees with LaSage.

“I do think we neglect to make time for actual conversation,” she said. “Actually sitting down and listening to others and making time for them. I think that is very important.”

Though virtual communication may take away from real interaction, it does make planning that face-to-face time easier. It lets people send a text, write an e-mail, or Face book a friend – all in the time it takes to make instant noodles.