technology is ruining our ability to communicate essay

Impact of Technology on Communication Essay

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Introduction

Advancement of technology in communication, media technology and online communication, the impacts of mobile phone on communication, reference list.

The realm of technology is ever-changing. New advances in applied science have forever transformed the way people interact. Exploring the impact of technology on communication and debating whether people connect with others differently seems to be the topic of the day.

Technology has allowed people to keep in touch no matter the distance. One is able to communicate 24 hours around the clock, seven days a week, 365 days on an interpersonal level.

What are the real impacts of technology on communication? How do electronics mediate and change the ways in which humans interact? How has the emergence of the Internet, mobile phones, and social networks affected society and businesses?

In order to reveal the importance of technology in communication, the essay tries to find answers to these questions. It explores how everything has changed over the years and discusses the connection between technology and communication.

To begin this examination and find answers to these questions, we begin by defining media and communication and outlining the stages of technological advancement from old age to the present day in the field of communication. The paper will highlight the use of the Internet, newspapers, radio, and other media, but it mostly dwells on the use of mobile telephony.

Communication is “the imparting or exchange of information by speaking, writing or using some other medium” (Daniel & Rod, 2011). On the other hand, media is defined as “the main means of mass communication (television, radio, and newspapers) regarded collectively.”

Technology has changed everything in the modern society. The way we communicate has been revolutionized by the advancement of new innovations in the telecommunication sector. Connecting with other people with ease is more feasible in today’s world, and this is due to speed.

Several centuries ago, books and newspapers reigned as the only choice of communication. Then later, innovators brought the radio and television before innovation was taken a notch higher with the coming of the personal computer (Johnson, 1997, p.3).

With every new innovation, the reliance on books and newspapers as the mass medium of communication continued to reduce. With time, human culture has come to understand the power and the mechanisms involved in technology and invention. In today’s world, information has permeated the cycles of change and development.

The world today, past and present, can be studied at ease with the growing information technology. Technology has advanced with sheer velocity allowing different media to shape our thinking and habits. The people who were born during the television era thought that it was the climax of innovation, but they suddenly found themselves acclimating to a new medium, the World Wide Web.

Every time a new medium rolls out, the perceptions towards the previous media you were used to change (Johnson, 1997 p5). Technology proved to be powerful in the sense that no human being can predict what will change and what won’t with certainty.

The irony of it all is the fact that the influence of technology extends beyond generations to come. It is with no doubt that technology has changed the lives of human beings; information and entertainment are being received in a more convenient way.

The innovation of having a conversation using a device called the telephone changed everything in communication. This became magical, and one couldn’t believe such innovation would exist (Tofts, 1997, p.40).

With the emergence of new media technologies, consumers have been empowered to ‘filter’ the information they want to receive. This allows them to have a choice of which news to watch or what information to listen to (Palmer, 2003, p.161).

Media consumption has been made an engaging experience with marketers studying the preferences of the consumers in order to reflect broader social changes in society. In today’s world, the computer is seen as a multi-purpose machine with work and leisure functions, therefore, creating more value.

The rise of the Internet has also made it possible to have virtual offices where the user can work from home or any convenient location. The flow of information from different media has greatly changed the social structures of society at different levels (Barry, 1999).

Digital media has enabled news and event to be channeled in real-time. The combination of the Internet and commerce has given birth to e-commerce sites providing huge potential for marketers to reach out to virtual communities.

In the world today, there are numerous media screens within our surroundings. This ranges from the television sets in our houses, computer monitors at the office, mobile phones and MP3 players in our pockets and handbag.

Even when shopping or waiting to board a plane, you’re most probably staring at screens with entertainment media (Soukup, 2008, p.5). Heavy marketing has been adopted by producers of mobile technologies targeting consumers who possess mobile phones with picture and video capacity (Goggin, 2006, p.170).

Media texts producers have termed mobile media as a “third screen,” a device that consumers carry around with much ease. Unlike television screens, broader communication networks have been integrated into personal computers and mobile phones (Goggin, 2006, p.9).

Train, buses, and airplanes have been dominated by mobile screens providing passengers with entertainment as well as other media content, especially advertisements (Caron & Carona, 2007, p.17). With a lot of commercial media content, the preferences of people change in their everyday lives.

The world of popular media has become chaotic, with hundreds of television channels to choose from, thousands of songs ready for download, and not forgetting millions of web pages to surf.

The emergence of social media like Facebook and Twitter has enabled people to manage interactions and relationships with many friends. Technologies have impacted interpersonal communication enabling people to interact more often than before.

In addition to reducing the distance between people, online communication with tools like Facebook and Twitter enables people to keep track of their contacts with friends and are more aware of the last time they interacted with them. Online communication now incorporates more than one mode of contact, including text, voice, and body language.

A mobile phone is a device that has always been seen as connecting people who are far apart, thus overcoming the geographical distance between them. The number of mobile phone users has continued to increase substantially. The mobile phone has been integrated as part of people’s lives in the sense that it’s available and easy to use, keeping us connected to our families, friends, and business people (Ling, 2004, p.21-24).

The how and when the way we use our mobile phones impacts our communication not only with those we’re communicating with but also with the people within our proximity. At this point, it is paramount to note the changes that have taken place and that have allowed the adoption of mobile phones. The tremendous proliferation of this device has drastically changed the traditional communication model.

Who are the users of mobile phones, and for what purposes do they use them? Has there been any change in the way mobile phone facilitates communication? How has the face to face interaction been affected by mobile calls? Has mobile communication enhanced relationships?

These are some of the questions that arise when we try to fathom the way communication has affected our personal and professional lives. There are sentiments that mobile phones have reduced humans to emotionless beings.

There is no doubt that the revolution brought about the use of mobile phones in the way we communicate. There have been different perceptions among individuals and social levels in society in regard to mobile usage.

When we had fixed telephone lines that were put in a booth, telephones were seen as business tools only and were placed in a fixed, quiet environment. There was restriction when it came to teenagers using these phones (Agar, 2003). The ‘birth’ of mobile phones brought changes, and phone calls became a habit to many irrespective of age or location.

Today, people can use mobile phones wherever they are in private or in public. People have been addicted to their mobile phones more than any other gadget known to man, with the device remaining on throughout. Its portability enables people to carry it wherever they go (Castells, 1996).

A personal virtual network has been created whereby users can be available at all times to communicate with friends, family, and colleagues. The geographical barrier has been destroyed, making people feel close to one another, and the face to face communication has been rendered rather less important with this mediated communication (Richard, 2004, p.22).

Meetings and briefings have become obsolete, with communication being mediated by a computer or a phone. Mobile SMS (short messaging service) service and the Internet has become the preferable communication channels for most teenagers and young people all over the world (Plant, 2000, p.23).

There are places where mobile phones have become taboo devices, places like churches and crucial corporate meetings. At such places, the mobile ring is seen as a nuisance. In other scenarios, it is seen as a destructive device by acting as a third party and especially for dating couples who want to have a private conversation.

Any phone ring is seen as an ‘intruder,’ and this harms the relationship between the partners (Plant, 2000, p.29). In his research, Plant observes that there are those people who use mobile as ’a means of managing privacy where calls are carefully selected’. He categorizes this group of people as ‘hedgehogs.’

The other category is those people who use mobile phones as the key central part of their life. They become so attached to the device and cannot do without it. Plant referred to this group as ‘fox.’ They are regular users who need to feel connected with their families and friend. Their life will be dreadful if they lack the device (2000, p.32).

Telephones have promoted the use of text messaging and modernization since it’s allowing people to communicate more both verbally and by texting in a more convenient and efficient way. SMS has made communication to be more immediate, and users can customize the message at ease with the various applications installed on their mobiles (Richard, 2004, p. 100).

The advanced phones have email support as well as multimedia messages making chatting become a lifestyle for many who conduct business and those initiating intimate communication. It has emerged that SMS has made people become more united.

Users have developed abbreviated messages, which are now universally accepted as an appropriate language. The initial purpose of the phone to make calls has even lost taste with many people, especially the young generation.

According to Reid &Reid, more than 85% of teenagers prefer texting to talking on their mobile usage (Reid & Reid, 2004, p.1). There is ease of communication when it comes to texting in the sense that some formalities are eliminated, making communication more personal.

Texting has helped introverts who may lack the skills to have phone conversations allowing them to express their true self to other people leading to greater understanding and stronger relationships (Reid & Reid, 2004, p.8).

The use of mobile technology has affected the personalities of people to a great extent. Today, more people are hiding their feelings and whereabouts behind mobile phones, and this has raised suspicions among families, friends, and couples.

People go through text messages of others just to find out more about the individual who might even have no clue about what is happening. Contrary to this, most people believe that mobile is so crucial in enhancing the relationship between people no matter the distance and that it bonds us together more than it separates us (Plant, 2000, p.58).

The usage of mobile phones by children and teenagers has changed the way parents bring up their kids. Parenting has really changed as parents try to increase their surveillance and monitor their children’s mobile usage.

Their concern is to know who communicates with their kind and the kind of conversations they normally have. They are worried about the kind of social network the children create in their contact lists.

With the emergence of virtual communities, the influence of mobile phones has spilled over and affects parenting in general. Nonetheless, the primary purpose of mobile phones to facilitate communication has not changed.

There is no doubt that technology has changed the way humans communicate. Great impacts can be seen in the way communication has changed the social structures of our society at all levels. Even in years to come, technology remains the driving force of the way people interact.

The advancement of technology ensures that communication is quicker and that more people remain connected. There has been an evolution in interpersonal skills with the advancement of technology, and users should always be keen on adapting to new ways of communication.

Technology has continually brought new methods of communication leading to the expansion of mediated communication. The reality of having one message shared across a huge audience (mass communication) is now with us. A situation where neither time nor geography can limit the accessibility of information.

We have seen the merging together of newspapers and books with computer technology so that the frequency and ease of reporting information and advertisements can be increased. The exposure of both individuals and society to mediated communication has therefore affected our daily lives, particularly in our culture and the way we communicate.

Agar, J., 2003. Constant Touch: A Global History of the Mobile Phone . Cambridge: Icon Books.

Barry, W., 1999. Networks in the Global Village . Boulder Colo: Westview Press.

Caron, A, & Caronia, L., 2007. Moving cultures: mobile communication in everyday life. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Castells, M., 1996. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Volume 1. The Rise of the Network Society . Oxford: Blackwell.

Daniel, C., & Rod, M., 2011.The Dictionary of Media and Communications . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Goggin, G., 2006. Cell phone culture mobile technology in everyday life. New York: Routledge.

Palmer, D., 2003. The Paradox of User Control’. 5 th Annual Digital Arts and Culture Conference (Proceedings), pp.160-164.

Plant, S., 2000. On the Mobile: the effects of mobile telephones on social and individual life . Web.

Postman, N., 1992. Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology . New York: Vintage Books.

Reid, D. J. & Reid F. J. M., 2004. Insights into the Social and Psychological Effects of SMS Text Messaging . Web.

Richard, L., 2004. The Mobile Connection: The Cell Phone’s Impact on Society . San Francisco Morgan: Kaufmann.

Soukup, C., 2008. ‘Magic Screens: Everyday Life in an Era of Ubiquitous and Mobile Media Screens’, presented at 94 th annual Convention . San Diego .

Stephen, J., 1997. Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate . San Francisco: Basic Books.

Tofts, D., 1997. ‘ The technology within’ in memory trade: A Prehistory of Cyberculture, North Ryde: 21C Books.

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Is Technology Enhancing or Hindering Interpersonal Communication? A Framework and Preliminary Results to Examine the Relationship Between Technology Use and Nonverbal Decoding Skill

Mollie a. ruben.

1 Department of Psychology, University of Maine, Orono, ME, United States

2 Center for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research, VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA, United States

Morgan D. Stosic

Jessica correale, danielle blanch-hartigan.

3 Department of Natural and Applied Sciences, Bentley University, Waltham, MA, United States

Associated Data

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Digital technology has facilitated additional means for human communication, allowing social connections across communities, cultures, and continents. However, little is known about the effect these communication technologies have on the ability to accurately recognize and utilize nonverbal behavior cues. We present two competing theories, which suggest (1) the potential for technology use to enhance nonverbal decoding skill or, (2) the potential for technology use to hinder nonverbal decoding skill. We present preliminary results from two studies to test these hypotheses. Study 1 ( N = 410) found that global screen time was unrelated to nonverbal decoding skill. However, how participants spent their time using technology mattered. Participants who reported more active technology use (i.e., posting content) self-reported that their nonverbal decoding skill (as measured by the Emotional Sensitivity subscale of the Social Skills Inventory) was superior but performed worse on objective measures of decoding skill (using standardized tests including the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy-Adult Faces and the Workplace Interpersonal Perception Skill). By contrast, passive users performed significantly better on objective measures of nonverbal decoding skill; although they did not self-report any difference in their skill compared to less passive users. Study 2 ( N = 190), and a mini-meta analysis of both studies, replicated this pattern. These effects suggest a roadmap for understanding the theoretical relationship between technology use and nonverbal communication skills. We also provide recommendations for future research, including the use of experimental designs to determine causal pathways and to advance our conceptual understanding of the relationship between technology use and nonverbal decoding skill.

Introduction

A young-professional is woken up to the sound of a buzzing alarm, and grudgingly rolls over to grab their phone. Perhaps this individual begins their morning by passively scrolling through their Facebook feed in order to determine their colleague’s reaction to the heated presidential debate the night before. Or maybe they snap a quick picture of their #OOTD (i.e., Outfit of the Day) to send to their close friend. After returning home from a long day of work-based videoconference calls, this individual may spend the next few hours sucked into the whereabouts of their favorite social media influencer, or casually swiping through some dating profiles. Before retiring to bed, however, they make sure to post a quick inspiring quote to their Twitter profile.

This scenario, while fictitious, illustrates the increasing relationship many individuals have with technology from the instant they wake up, to the instant they go to bed. Technology serves various functions, from increasing office productivity, facilitating big data collection, enhancing record keeping, and above all else, providing a distinctly digital way for humans to communicate with one another. Indeed, the rate of communicative instances via technology per day in 2020 is astounding: 350 million photos uploaded to Facebook, 500 million tweets, 3 billion snapchats, and over 26 billion texts by Americans alone ( Aslam, 2020a , b ; Sayce, 2020 ; Tocci, 2020 ).

While the digital revolution has certainly changed the way individuals can communicate, little empirical results exists regarding the effect of technology on an individual’s communication skills. Specifically, because technology markedly changes the available information individual’s use to decode the communicative intents of others (e.g., determining a friend’s emotional state via short text message instead of their facial expression), are those who spend large quantities of time communicating online better or worse decoders of nonverbal information? Not only is nonverbal decoding a crucial component of general social and communication skills, but it has been tied to better interpersonal outcomes (e.g., Hall et al., 2009 ), can be easily assessed with validated, reliable, and standardized objective measures, and can be improved with practice and feedback trainings (e.g., Schlegel et al., 2017b ). Therefore, the question of whether technology may affect nonverbal decoding, or how accurately a perceiver can recognize and interpret the nonverbal behaviors of another person, is important to empirically address.

Supplementing or even fully replacing face-to-face communication with technology-mediated communication affects both the number of nonverbal cues, as well as the types of nonverbal cues that individuals use to decode communicative meaning ( Vinciarelli, 2017 ). For example, text messages may not allow access to important vocal cues (e.g., pitch, tone, inflections), but may have distinct timing and spacing cues to draw from Döring and Pöschl (2008) . By contrast, video conferencing technologies may allow access to vocal cues, but may limit the ability to engage in mutual eye gaze or perceive body movements and gestures ( Ferrán-Urdaneta and Storck, 1997 ; Neureiter et al., 2013 ). If individuals rely more heavily on technology-mediated, as opposed to face-to-face, interactions as a primary means of communication, it seems likely that the nonverbal decoding skill individuals ordinarily employ in face-to-face communication would be impacted (e.g., worsened, or perhaps enhanced).

This paper applies communication skills theories and conceptual accounts of technology use to examine the role of technology use on an individual’s ability to accurately perceive the nonverbal behavior displayed by others (i.e., nonverbal decoding skill). For the purposes of this paper, we define technology use as any technology or application on a smart phone that contributes to communication online (e.g., use of social media sites, texting, emailing). Cell phone use is the predominant method of technology use by young adults in the United States today with 96% of 18–26 years-old young adults reporting ownership of a smart phone ( Pew Research Center., 2019 ). Therefore, for the remainder of the paper, when discussing technology use, we are referring specifically to smart phone use.

We start by reviewing two competing hypotheses, that technology use either enhances or hinders communication skills. We then present results from two cross-sectional studies and a mini meta-analysis of these studies on the relationship between technology use and nonverbal decoding skill to inform our understanding of which of the competing hypotheses is more likely supported. Finally, we make recommendations for future research aimed at disentangling the causal relationship between technology use and nonverbal decoding skill.

Technology Use May Enhance Communication Skills

The most effective way to improve nonverbal decoding skill is by practicing decoding nonverbal cues and receiving feedback on the accuracy of one’s perceptions ( Blanch-Hartigan et al., 2012 ; Schlegel et al., 2017a ). Regarding the relationship between technology use and nonverbal decoding skill, some theorists have argued that technology-mediated communication may enhance communication skills by providing a safe environment to practice sending and receiving nonverbal cues, and allowing for feedback regarding the accuracy of one’s perceptions (e.g., Stritzke et al., 2004 ; Ellison et al., 2007 ; Valkenburg and Peter, 2009 ). Because it is unusual in face-to-face interactions to receive feedback about one’s decoding ability, it may be that spending more time using technology to interact with others may facilitate face-to-face interactions by providing this type of practice and feedback to users on a regular basis.

Liberated Relationship Perspective

One hypothesis which falls into this “enhancement” framework is the Liberated Relationships Perspective ( Hu et al., 2004 ). This theory argues that increased internet usage has allowed individuals who may not typically engage in conversation the opportunity to engage with one another through technology-mediated communication. Some of the constraints may be psychological, such as in cases of shyness and social anxiety ( Stritzke et al., 2004 ), or physical, such as in cases of distant geographical locations ( Ellison et al., 2007 ). According to this framework, internet usage may afford an increase in the number of interactions an individual is able to engage in. If the internet supplements, instead of detracts from, face-to-face interactions, individuals may have increased opportunities to practice nonverbal decoding with a greater number and variety of communication partners.

Internet Enhanced Self-Disclosure Hypothesis

While not directly related to communication skill, the Internet Enhanced Self-Disclosure Hypothesis also provides support for improved nonverbal decoding skill with increased technology use ( Valkenburg and Peter, 2009 ). This theory posits that greater technology use may enhance social connectedness and wellbeing by enhancing online self-disclosure . The authors define online self-disclosure as “online communication about personal topics that are typically not easily disclosed, such as one’s feelings, worries, and vulnerabilities” (p. 2). Because online platforms allow for the sharing of intimate information to a significantly greater degree than do face-to-face interactions, it is likely that individuals are afforded more opportunities to practice decoding and receive feedback regarding affective information. Individuals who engage in technology-mediated communication more frequently may become more skilled decoders of nonverbal information, perhaps for affective information in particular.

Technology Use May Hinder Communication Skills

While these two “enhancement” theories describe the ways in which increased technology usage may allow individuals more opportunities to practice decoding nonverbal communication, others have argued a competing perspective. Specifically, researchers have argued that technology may hinder specific communication skills. Spending time communicating via technology may result in less face-to-face interactions and therefore less practice decoding nonverbal information in whole, as well as from specific cue channels (e.g., vocal tone) which are reduced or absent in many technology platforms ( Kraut et al., 1998 ; Nie, 2001 ; Patterson, 2019 ). In this way, the type of communication skills learned or practiced in technology-mediated communication are not equivalent to, and may even hinder, the skills required to decode nonverbal behavior in face-to-face interactions.

Reduction Hypothesis

In the early 1990s, several researchers theorized that the internet had detrimental effects on adolescent wellbeing and social connectedness ( Kraut et al., 1998 ; Nie, 2001 ). It was assumed that because the internet motivates adolescents to form superficial online relationships with strangers that are less beneficial than their real-world relationships, time spent online occurs at the expense of time spent with existing relationships. The Reduction Hypothesis posits that it is the lack of or decrease in face-to-face interacting that leads to detrimental communicative consequences rather than technology itself ( Valkenburg and Peter, 2009 ).

Valkenburg and Peter (2009) propose two important updates to this theory based on changes in how individuals use the internet to communicate since the Reduction Hypothesis was first introduced. First, in the second half of the 1990s, it was hard to maintain a pre-existing social network on the internet because not a lot of people had access to it, often resulting in online friends separate from offline friends. Today, with more widespread access and utilization of the internet and social media, individuals spend more time online connecting with people they also spend time with in face-to-face interactions as opposed to forming online-only relationships with strangers ( Valkenburg and Peter, 2009 ). However, the communication skills, such as nonverbal decoding, that individuals develop through online interactions may not translate to actual face-to-face interactions. As such, time spent online may stunt the development of nonverbal decoding necessary for face-to-face interactions. Therefore, although our internet habits have changed, the Reduction Hypothesis is still relevant to theorizing regarding the effects of technology use on nonverbal decoding ability.

Cues-Filtered–Out Theory

In addition to reducing the amount of time individuals spend interacting face-to-face, theorists have also noted that many technology-mediated communication platforms greatly reduce both the number as well as the kinds of nonverbal cues technology users are exposed to. Cues absent from some technology-mediated communication (e.g., social media, texting, emailing) can include physical appearance, tone of voice, facial expression, gaze, posture, touch, space, and gestures ( Kiesler et al., 1984 ; Siegel et al., 1986 ). These nonverbal cues are important in expressing relative status, affect, relationship roles, and many other interpersonal dimensions. This Cues-Filtered-Out Theory ( Culnan and Markus, 1987 ; Sproull and Kiesler, 1986 ) suggests that without these cues available, especially for low bandwidth technology (i.e., communication systems with access to only one or two channels such as vocal, kinesics, or proxemics), certain communicative functions are lost. Although higher bandwidth systems may allow for certain nonverbal cues, these cues are often more obvious and lack complexity, which may cause individuals to lose the ability to decode more subtle nonverbal cues (e.g., facial expressions are more complex than emoji’s, vocal intensity is more complex than CAPITALIZING words). Therefore, this theory suggests that the filtering out of important nonverbal cues (e.g., especially for individuals who use low bandwidth technology systems) impacts an individual’s ability to receive practice and feedback on the accuracy of their nonverbal decoding attempts, thereby hindering nonverbal decoding skill ( Walther and Parks, 2002 ).

Current Research and Hypotheses

The primary objective of the current research is to empirically examine the relationship between technology use and nonverbal decoding skill via two studies and a mini meta-analysis combining results from these two studies. Because individuals may use technology the same amount but differ in how they spend their time online, we measured users’ online communication activity via objective global screen time use taken from iPhone users, as well as the degree of self-reported active technology use (posting selfies and photographs, responding to others’ posts) and the degree of self-reported passive technology use (scrolling through photographs and others’ posts but not responding or posting themselves). In addition, we also sought to be thorough in our assessment of nonverbal decoding skill, as researchers have demonstrated that there are different kinds of decoding skills subsumed by a higher-order global decoding skill ( Schlegel et al., 2017a ). Therefore, we employed three distinct measures of nonverbal decoding, two objective assessments of skill using a standardized, validated, and reliable test of emotion recognition [i.e., Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy-Adult Faces (DANVA-2AF; Nowicki and Duke, 1994 )] and a newly developed test that assesses relevant decoding ability in the workplace such as inferring behavioral intentions, personality traits, status, interpersonal attitudes (dominance/cooperativeness and motivations), behavioral outcomes, and thoughts and feelings [i.e., the Workplace Interpersonal Perception Skill (WIPS; Dael et al., in preparation )], and one self-report measure [the Emotional Sensitivity subscale of the Social Skills Inventory (SSI; Riggio, 2005 )]. Together, we utilized these various measures of technology and nonverbal decoding skill in order to test the preceding competing hypotheses: (1) more technology use is related to better nonverbal decoding skill vs. (2) more technology use is related to poorer nonverbal decoding skill.

Materials and Methods

Participants.

Data were collected from 410 participants in the University of Maine introductory participant pool for a study on perceiving nonverbal signals in others. Of these, 51% were male and 48% were female. A total of 377 (92%) participants identified as white, 15 (4%) as Asian, 14 (3%) as American Indian or Alaska Native, 12 (3%) as Black, 2 (0.5%) as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and 33 (8%) as Other. Their ages ranged from 18 to 29 ( M = 19.09, SD = 1.56). A power analysis conducted using G ∗ Power ( Faul et al., 2007 ) assuming a small to medium effect ( r = 0.15) of technology use on nonverbal decoding skill indicated that 343 participants would be needed to achieve 80% power using an alpha level of 0.05 (two-tailed). The final sample of participants exceeds this threshold, indicating that the present study is sufficiently powered to detect small to medium effects.

Technology Use

Three separate measures of technology use were collected from participants. For iPhone users, participants were instructed to navigate to their phone settings and extract their average daily screen time over the last 7 days in minutes ( N = 263). This screen time metric is a real-time report of how much time a participant spends with their phone screen turned on in an average week (i.e., listening to music with one’s screen off is not included). To ensure participants did not alter their responses in order to appear more socially desirable, we also required that they upload a screenshot of this information. In addition to this objective measure of technology use, participants were asked to self-report on a scale of 0–10 from “does not describe me at all” to “describes me very well” how well the following statements described their technology use, “I tend to be an active user, posting frequently” and “I tend to be a passive user, scrolling through posts and photos.” These two questions comprised our self-report measures of technology use: the degree to which a participant endorsed themselves as an active user separately from the degree to which a participant endorsed themselves as a passive user. Because active user endorsement and passive user endorsement were single item questions rather than a single bipolar item, participants could report any combination of active and passive technology use. That is, a participant could endorse a high degree of active use and a high degree of passive use, they could report a low degree of both, or a high degree of one and not the other. For all analyses, we entered both continuous variables to examine how the independent contribution of active and passive use predicted our outcomes of interest.

Nonverbal Decoding Measures

The newly developed WIPS test (Workplace Interpersonal Perception Skill; Dael et al., in preparation ; a = 0.67) assesses multiple aspects of decoding skill using 41 brief video segments with and without sound from three types of role-played workplace interactions: a recruiter-applicant negotiation, a helpdesk trouble-shooting scenario, and a company team meeting. Each segment is paired with a multiple-choice question for which the correct answer was based on actual behavior (what happened in the interaction during or after the video segment), instructions that the actors received (e.g., to be competitive), actors’ self-reported personality, or post-interaction evaluations (e.g. perceptions of the other as competitive) and response options varied from 2 options to 6 options depending on the item. In this way, participants must decode multiple simultaneous nonverbal cues (e.g., tone of voice, facial expression) in order to accurately assess the interpersonal characteristics of any given situation. For some items, the video consisted of multiple short segments (e.g., You will see the same person in two different negotiations signing a contract. In which negotiation did the person negotiate the better deal for herself?) while other videos were based off of just one video (e.g., In the following video, you will see 6 people enter the room for a team meeting. Who is the team leader?). Accuracy is calculated as the proportion correct responses compared against a criterion or correct response for each segment.

Participants also completed the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy-Adult Faces (DANVA-2AF; Nowicki and Duke, 1994 ; a = 0.60), a test of emotion recognition ability using static and posed photographs. This measure presents 24 photographs of adult faces with high and low intensity portrayals of the four basic emotions of happiness, anger, sadness, and fear. Accuracy was calculated as the proportion correct.

Finally, participants completed the Emotional Sensitivity (ES; a = 0.80) subscale of the Social Skills Inventory (SSI; Riggio, 2005 ). The ES subscale consists of 15 self-report items, with a 5-point response scale ranging from “Not at all like me” to “Exactly like me.” The ES subscale specifically assesses self-reported skill for decoding emotional and other nonverbal messages (e.g., I always seem to know what people’s true feelings are no matter how hard they try to conceal them) . For analysis purposes, a sum was calculated across items.

Our second study was an exact replication of Study 1 launched approximately 3 months after Study 1 with data from 190 participants from the University of Maine introductory participant pool. Because we had not hypothesized a priori the effect of active and passive technology use on nonverbal decoding skill, we wished to collect a second sample of participants in order to investigate whether the pattern of results we describe in Study 1 would replicate. The demographics of this second sample were comparable to those from our first study, with 91 male participants (48%) and 99 females (52%). Of these, 179 (94%) identified as white, 9 (5%) as Asian, 5 (3%) as Black, 2 (1%) as American Indian or Alaska Native, 1 (0.5%) as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and 6 (3%) as Other. Participant’s ages ranged from 18 to 31 ( M = 19.43, SD = 1.57). A power analysis conducted using G ∗ Power ( Faul et al., 2007 ) assuming a small to medium effect derived from Study 1 ( r = 0.20) indicated that 191 participants would be needed to achieve 80% power using an alpha level of 0.05 (two-tailed).

To test our competing hypotheses about the relationship between technology use and nonverbal decoding skill, we first examined bivariate correlations between our study variables. Next, we ran a series of linear regressions on the whole sample in Study 1 and Study 2 controlling for participant gender to examine the independent contribution of active and passive technology use on each of our nonverbal decoding skill measures (accuracy scores on the WIPS test, accuracy scores on the DANVA, and self-reported emotional sensitivity).

To combine results from Study 1 and Study 2, a mini meta-analysis ( Goh et al., 2016 ) was performed for each technology use variable and each nonverbal decoding variable. We used fixed effects in which the mean effect size (i.e., mean correlation) was weighted by sample size. All correlations were Fisher’s z transformed for analyses and converted back to Pearson correlations for presentation.

Means, standard deviations, and bivariate correlations are presented in Table 1 . Contrary to what would be predicted by either theoretical framework, screen time use was unrelated to every measure of nonverbal decoding skill we employed. However, when examining the ways in which participants self-reported spending their time online, a more complex pattern emerged. Specifically, more active technology use was related to higher self-reported nonverbal decoding skill ( r = 0.20, p < 0.001) but lower accuracy score on the WIPS ( r = −0.17, p < 0.001). That is, participants who identified as more active users (i.e., posting frequently) believed that they were better judges of others’ nonverbal communication, but performed significantly worse on an objective test of nonverbal decoding skill (i.e., the WIPS test). On the other hand, participants who reported being more passive users (i.e., reading through posts and looking at other people’s photographs) were significantly more accurate in decoding nonverbal behavior, as measured by the WIPS ( r = 0.14, p = 0.005), although they did not self-report any differences in their nonverbal decoding skills from less passive users as highlighted by the correlation between passive user endorsement and self-reported skill on the ES subscale of the SSI ( r = 0.04, p = 0.484). Neither self-reported passive nor active technology use was significantly related to an individual’s ability to decode facial expressions of emotions, measured via the DANVA-2AF ( p ’s > 0.07).

Study 1 and study 2 means, standard deviations, and bivariate correlations between technology use, nonverbal decoding skill, and gender.

Gender, Technology Use, and Nonverbal Decoding Skill

Because active and passive technology use were not mutually exclusive (i.e., an individual could report being high on active and passive use), and because gender is related to both technology use ( Jackson et al., 2008 ) as well as nonverbal decoding skill ( Hall and Gunnery, 2013 ), we wished to determine the independent effects of active and passive technology use on nonverbal decoding skill while controlling for gender. Therefore, we first entered active use, passive use, and gender into a regression predicting accuracy scores on the WIPS. Active use remained a significant negative predictor (β std = −0.21, p < 0.001; Table 2 ), suggesting that those who are more active users were worse at decoding nonverbal behavior. Passive use also remained a significant positive predictor (β std = 0.11, p = 0.02), where those who reported spending their time looking at others’ posts and pictures were more accurate in decoding nonverbal behavior. Further, these two effects were significant even after controlling for gender, which also significantly predicted higher scores on the WIPS test (β std = 0.21, p < 0.001; female coded as 1, male coded as 0). Approximately 8% of the variance in WIPS test scores was accounted for when active use, passive use, and gender were entered as predictors.

Regression results from study 1 and study 2 examining the independent contribution of technology use variables on nonverbal decoding skill.

We next entered active use, passive use, and gender into a regression predicting accuracy scores on the DANVA-2AF. None of these variables, apart from gender (β std = 0.17, p = 0.001), significantly predicted scores on the DANVA-2AF ( Table 2 ). Approximately 4% of the variance in DANVA-2AF scores was accounted for by these predictor variables.

When active use, passive use, and gender were entered into a regression predicting self-reported nonverbal decoding skill, active use remained a significant positive predictor (β std = 0.18, p < 0.001), such that those who were more active users self-reported that they were better at decoding nonverbal information from others ( Table 2 ). While more passive use was unrelated to self-reported nonverbal decoding skill, gender remained a marginally significant positive predictor (β std = 0.10, p = 0.052) indicating that females reported being more skilled nonverbal decoders than males. Approximately 5% of the variance in self-reported nonverbal decoding skill was accounted for when active use, passive use, and gender were entered as predictors.

While results from Study 1 were neither supportive of an enhancing or suppressing effect of global technology usage on nonverbal decoding skill, we did find that the ways individuals used technology mattered (i.e., actively versus passively). Because this active/passive relationship was not hypothesized a priori , we examined these effects in a separate sample of participants. Therefore, akin to Study 1, we first examined the bivariate correlations between our measures of technology use and nonverbal decoding skill. We once again found that screen time use was unrelated to objective measures of nonverbal decoding skill—i.e., the DANVA and WIPS ( p’s > 0.20). However, in Study 2 objective screen time use was significantly and positively related to self-reported nonverbal decoding skill ( r = 0.17, p = 0.050) ( Table 1 ).

Replicating Study 1’s findings, active technology use was also related to higher self-reported nonverbal decoding skill ( r = 0.25, p = 0.001), but lower objective nonverbal decoding skill as measured by the WIPS ( r = −0.16, p = 0.028). Individuals who identified as more passive users were once again significantly more accurate in decoding nonverbal behavior, as measured by the WIPS ( r = 0.27, p < 0.001), although they did not self-report any differences in their nonverbal decoding skills from less passive users ( r = −0.03, p = 0.653). Neither self-reported passive nor active technology use was significantly related to an individual’s ability to decode facial expressions of emotions, measured via the DANVA-2AF ( p’s > 0.167).

We deconstructed these effects by entering active use, passive use, and gender into three separate linear regressions predicting the WIPS, DANVA-2AF, and self-reported nonverbal decoding skill. We regressed our three predictor variables on scores from the WIPS. Replicating regression results from Study 1, active technology use was a marginally significant negative predictor of nonverbal decoding skill (β std = −0.13, p = 0.085), passive use remained a significant positive predictor of nonverbal decoding skill (β std = 0.25, p = 0.001), and gender was a significant predictor, with females scoring higher on the WIPS test compared to males (β std = 0.27, p < 0.001). This model accounted for 15% of the variance in WIPS scores.

Next, we regressed active use, passive use, and gender on scores from the DANVA-2AF. Once again, gender was the only significant positive predictor (β std = 0.32, p < 0.001), with females scoring significantly higher than males. Approximately 11% of the variance in DANVA-2AF scores was accounted for by these three predictors.

When active use, passive use, and gender were entered into a regression predicting self-reported nonverbal decoding skill, active use was a significant positive predictor, similar to Study 1, (β std = 0.21, p = 0.006), such that those who were more active technology users self-reported having more skill in decoding nonverbal information. Reporting more passive technology use was unrelated to self-reported nonverbal decoding skill. Gender remained a significant positive predictor (β std = 0.31, p < 0.001) indicating that females self-reported more nonverbal decoding skill than males. Approximately 16% of the variance in self-reported nonverbal decoding skill was accounted for when active use, passive use, and gender were entered as predictors.

Mini Meta-Analysis

Finally, we conducted a mini meta-analysis ( Goh et al., 2016 ) in order to provide a consistent account regarding the relationship between technology use and objective and self-reported measures of nonverbal decoding skill across these two studies. After combining these effects across both studies, we found that individuals who self-reported more active technology use self-reported higher nonverbal decoding skill (M r = 0.22, p < 0.001), but scored lower on one objective index of nonverbal decoding skill (i.e., the WIPS test: M r = −0.17, p < 0.001). Moreover, individuals who self-reported more passive use scored significantly higher on both objective indices of nonverbal decoding (i.e., the WIPS test: M r = 0.18, p < 0.001 and the DANVA2-AF: M r = 0.09, p = 0.023), but did not self-report higher levels of nonverbal decoding skill (M r = 0.02, p = 0.667; Table 3 ).

Mini meta-analysis results from study 1 and study 2 examining combined correlations between measures of technology use and nonverbal decoding skill.

While many have theorized about the potential positive or negative effects that technology may have on communication skills, no studies to date have empirically examined the relationship between technology use and nonverbal decoding skill. In order to begin to understand the ways in which technology use and nonverbal decoding skill are related, we measured multiple facets of each construct to more thoroughly examine their empirical relationships with one another.

While overall screen time was unrelated to any measure of nonverbal decoding skill, interesting and consistent patterns emerged when looking at the way individuals spent their time using technology. Specifically, individuals who reported actively posting and engaging with technology-mediated communication self-reported that they were more accurate at decoding the nonverbal behaviors of others. However, these more active users were more likely to score lower on objective measures of nonverbal decoding skill. Conversely, individuals who reported spending their time online passively viewing others’ posts and photos scored higher on objective nonverbal decoding skill but did not self-report that their skills were any better.

These findings lend support to the role of practice and feedback as an effective way to increase nonverbal decoding skill ( Blanch-Hartigan et al., 2012 ). Passive users of communication technology likely receive practice in decoding nonverbal cues simply by being exposed to other users’ content (e.g., pictures, posts, videos) and thus a greater frequency of nonverbal cues. Indeed, the average screen time reported across both studies was about 5 h a day, meaning that passive users may spend up to 5 h each day practicing decoding nonverbal cues. In contrast to “other-focused” passive users, active users likely lose out on a plethora of communication cues as they report spending their time online engaging in “self-focused” activities. That is, although active users likely receive a great deal of practice encoding their own thoughts, feelings, attitudes, etc., they do not receive this same practice when it comes to decoding the thoughts, feelings, attitudes, etc. of others.

Therefore, these results support both the hypothesis that technology use enhances nonverbal decoding skill, and the hypothesis that technology use worsens nonverbal decoding skill. The key lies in how one spends their time using technological platforms. Those who use technology to practice making judgments of others may benefit from time online and learn skills to enhance their face-to-face interactions. However, greater technology use may have the opposite effect for those who choose to spend their time online creating and posting their own content, instead of interacting with the content of others. In these cases, technology may have adverse effects on an individual’s nonverbal decoding skill in face-to-face interactions.

The current research is not without limitations. First, we are limited by our homogenous sample of college participants in one US state. More research is needed to see if the relationship between active and passive technology use and nonverbal decoding skill will generalize more broadly. In addition, while the WIPS test has many advantages to other tests of nonverbal decoding ability (e.g., good reliability and validity, real-world workplace context, dynamic stimuli, many domains of nonverbal sensitivity), it is not yet a published, validated test of decoding ability. Additionally, although self-reporting active and passive technology use provides valid information regarding the way participant’s view their online activity, or the way they are motivated to be, future studies should confirm these self-reports with objective measures in order to assess the accuracy of individual’s self-perceptions. We also examined one aspect of technology use on smartphone devices and the questions focused on self-reported social media use. The role of other technology-mediated communication platforms, such as teleconferencing or interactive video gaming, deserve future study. In our regression models, only 4–16% of the variance in decoding skills was explained by our predictors; therefore, there are many other factors that impact decoding skill ability which should be explored in future work. While the WIPS test is not validated yet (i.e., in prep), it is more ecologically valid than many other available standardized tests of decoding ability because it includes many workplace scenarios and dynamic video rather than focusing on one domain (e.g., emotion recognition like the DANVA-2AF) or using just static photographs where participants often show a ceiling effect on accuracy. In addition, and explained extensively below, we cannot make causal claims about the direction of the relationships given that our data was cross-sectional.

Suggestions to Further Theories of Technology Use and Nonverbal Decoding Skill

Although our data suggest that the way in which an individual communicates with technology may impact nonverbal decoding skills globally (i.e., as measured by the WIPS test), we only observed a marginally significant effect to suggest that technology use was related to an individual’s ability to decode facial expressions of emotion measured via the DANVA-2AF. While it may be that technology truly does not impact this facet of nonverbal decoding skill, it is also possible that we did not measure technology use at a detailed enough level to reveal any meaningful relationships. Although participants reported technology use generally, different social media and technology communication platforms are vastly different in their bandwidth and each emphasize distinct cue channels. For example, while some platforms emphasize visual cues (e.g., Instagram, Snapchat) others may underscore more verbal cues (e.g., Facebook, Twitter). Collapsing technology use across all platforms may dilute interesting relationships between particular social media apps, cue channels, and nonverbal decoding skill. For instance, it may be that individuals who passively use applications which highlight posting pictures or videos receive more practice in decoding facial expressions, and therefore may score higher on emotion decoding tests such as the DANVA-2AF. Therefore, we urge future researchers to be thoughtful in selecting the most relevant nonverbal decoding skill measure for their particular study Stosic and Bernieri (in prep) taking into account domain (e.g., emotion recognition or general workplace decoding skills) as decoding ability does not appear to be a single skill ( Schlegel et al., 2017a ), and to further explore the ways in which specific technology-mediated platforms, opposed to global technology use, impact vital communication skills.

In addition to delineating more precise constructs, the areas of technology and nonverbal communication research would benefit from an increase in experimental designs. While we have interpreted our data as technology use potentially influencing nonverbal decoding skills, it is highly plausible that the causal relationship is reversed. Individuals who are more accurate perceivers of others’ nonverbal behavior may be more likely to use technology in a passive way because they are more practiced, more comfortable, or more engaged with others. Those who are less accurate perceivers of others’ nonverbal behavior may use technology more actively because they are more self-focused or find perceiving others to be more challenging or less rewarding. The correlational nature of the current studies does not allow us to untangle the direction of these effects. Therefore, we urge future work to consider experimental designs to examine the causal relationship between technology use and communication ability, particularly nonverbal decoding skill.

While experimental designs on this topic are rare, we are aware of one study that employed a quasi-experimental design to manipulate technology use. Age-matched cohorts of preteens attended a summer camp in a staggered order such that one group went earlier than the other group ( Uhls et al., 2014 ). While at camp, electronics including television, computers, and mobile phones were not allowed. The first group to attend camp was the experimental group ( N = 51) and the group that stayed at school while the first group was at camp was considered the control group ( N = 54). After just 5 days of interacting face-to-face without the use of any technology, preteens’ recognition of nonverbal emotion cues from photographs and videos (using the DANVA-2 Child and Adult Faces and the Child and Adolescent Social Perception Measure) was significantly greater compared to the control group. From this, we can gather that the short-term effects of increased opportunities for face-to-face interaction, combined with time away from screen-based media and digital communication, improved preteens’ understanding of and ability to decode nonverbal emotion cues.

Completely removing technology can be difficult in a real-world context; however, there are a variety of methods we propose to untangle the relationship between technology use and nonverbal decoding skill. There are applications and settings on most smartphones that display an alert when the user has reached a screen time maximum for the day. Researchers could consider a dose-response experiment in which they randomly assign different allowed hours of screen time to users each day for a series of days. One could then understand if different doses of screen time lead to higher or lower levels of nonverbal decoding skill.

In another potential research design, researchers could randomly assign the way technology is used by participants. Researchers could assign individuals as “passive users” who are not allowed to post but must read through others’ posts and/or photographs. Some questions to consider are whether or not this would facilitate practice, contribute to learning, and improve nonverbal decoding skill. Another quasi-experimental design could follow emerging adolescents with or without phones and assess differences in their nonverbal decoding skills, accounting for covariates and confounders such as gender, socioeconomic status, parents’ educational levels, and baseline communication skills.

In addition to experimentally manipulating technology use, research could examine and potentially rule out the reverse causality claim that nonverbal decoding skill is driving technology use. To do this, researchers could train participants on nonverbal decoding skill using validated trainings, such as the Geneva Emotion Recognition Test training (GERT; Schlegel et al., 2017b ), and then assess whether technology use changes over time or if training nonverbal decoding skill makes technology-mediated communication smoother or more rewarding.

As the use of technology-mediated communication continues to expand, it is crucial for psychological research to address the positive and negative consequences of technology use on communication skills, in particular nonverbal communication. The current research suggests that it may not be the technology use itself, but rather how actively or passively users engage with technology, that facilitates or hinders nonverbal decoding skill. We ultimately found support for all hypotheses (i.e., Liberated Relationship Perspective, Internet Enhanced Self Disclosure Hypothesis, Reduction Hypothesis, and Cues Filtered Out Theory) but the ways in which the hypotheses were supported depended on how users interacted with technology. Our results showed that those who use technology in a more passive way (reading and look at others’ posts) had higher nonverbal decoding accuracy. That is, more passive users may benefit from time online and learn skills to enhance their face-to-face communication (supporting the Liberated Relationship Perspective and Internet Enhanced Self Disclosure Hypothesis). For those who reported more active use (creating and posting their own content), they had lower nonverbal decoding accuracy. For these more active users, technology may have adverse effects on their ability to read and respond to others in face-to-face communication (supporting the Reduction Hypothesis and Cues Filtered Out Theory).

We believe these results to be encouraging, as some of the fears regarding the negative impact of technology on an individual’s communication skills may not come to fruition if technology is used in a more passive, observational manner rather than an active, self-focused manner. Beyond these results, we also provide researchers with suggestions to further the field of technology use and communication skills. Due to the growing diversity in technology-mediated communication platforms, we urge researchers to account for the different functions theses platforms afford users. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, we urge researchers to explore experimental designs to determine causal pathways in the complex relationship between technology and communication skills. Researchers are beginning to understand how the technological revolution is changing the ways in which humans navigate social interactions. A deeper appreciation for this complexity can lead to the development of interventions to enhance and not hinder our communication skills with the increasing presence and benefits of technology in our lives.

Data Availability Statement

Ethics statement.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the University of Maine IRB. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author Contributions

MR, MS, and JC contributed to conception, design of the study, and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. MR organized the database and performed the statistical analysis. DB-H wrote sections of the manuscript. All authors contributed to manuscript revision, read, and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We thank research assistant, Vasiliqi Turlla, for her help in data collection and data cleaning and Herbert Ruben for always asking what technology was doing to our communication skills.

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Speaking of Psychology: Technology is changing how we talk to each other, with Jeff Hancock, PhD

Episode 142 — technology is changing how we talk to each other.

Zoom, Facebook, group text messages: This past year, technology has sometimes felt like the glue that’s kept many of our relationships alive. More and more, we talk to each other with technology in between us. Jeff Hancock, PhD, director of the Social Media Lab at Stanford University, discusses how this is affecting human communication, including whether people are more likely to lie online, whether the versions of ourselves that we present on social media are authentic, how artificial intelligence infiltrates our text messages, why video calls exhaust us more than in-person conversations, and more.

About the expert: Jeff Hancock, PhD

Streaming Audio

Kim Mills: This past year, technology has been the glue that's kept many of our relationships alive. Birthday parties and business meetings moved to Zoom and we kept up with friends and acquaintances who we could no longer see in person with Facebook updates, FaceTime and group text messages. Now, even as life begins to return to normal, technology-mediated communication is here to stay. Although offices are starting to reopen, many workplaces plan to allow teleworking to continue, which will mean those dreaded Zoom meetings are not going away.

But even before the pandemic, we were already relying heavily on social media to keep us connected. Facebook alone has 2.8 billion monthly active users and 85% of Americans now own a smartphone. More and more, when we talk to each other, we do it with some kind of technology between us. So what does this mean for human communication? Is the version of ourselves that we present on social media authentic and truthful? Are people more likely to lie online or in a text message than they are in person? Do video calls exhaust us more than in-person conversations do? And perhaps more broadly, is all of this technology-driven communication good for our mental health and wellbeing or not?

Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills.

Our guest today is Dr. Jeff Hancock, a psychologist and professor in the department of communication at Stanford University, where he founded and directs the Stanford Social Media Lab. Dr. Hancock is an expert in social media behavior and the psychology of online interaction. He is well-known for his research on how people lie and whether we can detect deception in texts, emails or in online reviews. His TED talk on deception has been viewed more than 1 million times. He's also studied how social media affects well-being and how artificial intelligence is changing the way we talk to one another. 

Thank you for joining us, Dr. Hancock.

Jeff Hancock, PhD: Thanks Kim. I'm excited to be here.

Mills: So as I said, the name of your research group is the Stanford Social Media Lab. For a lot of people, when they think of social media, they think about Twitter, or LinkedIn, or Facebook or Instagram. You study those, but you also have a broader definition of what social media is. Can you explain that?

Hancock: Right, yeah. And in fact, I had a social media lab at Cornell before there was social media, so to speak, because for me, social media is any technology that we use to be social with one another. So I'm really interested in human-to-human communication, when there's some technology between us. But even more broadly, if you're talking to a robot, in a way I think of that as social media. When you're interacting with your car, that's a form of social media, and you and I here on a video conference to me is social media as well.

Mills: So let's talk about something that falls under that broader umbrella, which is video chat. Your research into Zoom fatigue has gotten quite a bit of recent media coverage. What exactly is Zoom fatigue? And why should we find it so exhausting to just sit in front of a computer screen and talk to other people?

Hancock: Well, that's exactly the question that my colleague, Jeremy Bailenson and I had, when the pandemic first started and us faculty members had all this extra time because we didn't have to commute. We weren't going into the lab, meetings were getting canceled left and right. But everything went to Zoom, and we found ourselves having these conversations about why would this be so tiring? We're here relaxed, we're in our homes. And so what we started to look at were the differences between Zoom conferences and face-to-face. And looking back, there was a lot of work in the '90s. My colleague here at Stanford, Pam Hinds, had done work on video conferencing and why they might be more fatiguing, but it's sort of, the research died out to some degree because it wasn't a huge deal. People weren't using video conference all the time. It was there if you wanted it, but most people didn't use it.

So what we started to talk about was this general feeling of kind of exhaustion or tiredness. Sometimes afterwards, Jeremy would say, “I just don't feel like doing anything afterwards.” Or I would say, “I don't want to talk to anybody after that.” So we found some sort of consensus on this idea that maybe Zoom meetings aren't necessarily more fatiguing than face-to-face, but have a kind of some unique fatigue. We think it's related to some of the non-verbal dynamics. So Jeremy laid this out in one of his articles really nicely. The fact that your face right now is really close to mine. So almost like at an intimate level and that's sort of physiologically arousing. Either we're going to be, come to blows or we're going to have a kiss, right? Like it's very unusual for us to be this close. When we're on with lots of people, even if I'm not speaking, it feels like a lot of people are staring at us. Something that we've called “hyper gaze.”

And to me then, one of the biggest ones psychologically is the mirror. So right now I'm speaking to you, I can see myself, in fact, my image is as big as yours. And while we've all seen ourselves in the mirror before, we've never really seen ourselves socially behaving. When we go into the bathroom and check ourselves out, it's usually just for appearance, but not for how we behave. This has a huge impact on us, I think and is very tiring. I've been trying to track myself just how much time I look at my image versus yours. And so it's hard to do this kind of introspection, but I'm guessing it's about half the time. My attention is drawn back to my image. So these are some of the examples of why Zoom could be so fatiguing.

Mills: Let's turn for a moment to your research on deception and lying. Your TED Talk that I mentioned a moment ago is called, The Future of Lying . What is the future of lying? How will it be different from its past?

Hancock: That is a really great question. For me, I was interested in how technology could change how often we lie, and then how we sort of end up trusting other people, kind of two sides of the same coin in a way. When we first started looking at it, we would ask people, where do they think people would lie the most? And what we found was this sort of folk theory that as soon as you couldn't see the other person, as soon as you couldn't hear the other person, lying would go up. And it’s sort of this non-verbal cue idea that if I can't see them, then they can lie more easily and therefore they will. And that’s wrong, it turns, out on a whole bunch of levels. And I think the most recent work that I think is the best on deception detection in general, is Tim Levine's, and it's summarized in his book, Duped .

And what we find when it comes to technology is his ideas from Duped work perfectly. So the first is that most of the time, most people don't want to lie, right? The best option usually is to tell the truth. And sometimes we're in positions where that's uncomfortable or awkward or could be harmful for us. And that doesn't really change when we go into technology. And I should also clarify that I'm not talking about the Russian spies or the scam artists, the prince from Nigeria or any of those folks. Instead, I'm talking about people that we know, people that we have a tie with.

And in that case, it looks like the psychology really drives lying, not the technology. So we found that people will be just as likely to lie in technologically mediated places as others, except there was one big difference. And that is, when the technology left a record. So in some of our earliest work, we found that people would lie the least in emails. And emails are one of these really recorded ones. So if I send you an email, not only do you have a copy of the lie I just sent you, but there's also ones on servers and everything.

So most of the time psychology is what's going to drive whether someone lies or not, not the technology, but there are some features. So if there's a record, people tend to think about that a little bit. Another one is whether we're synchronous or not. So when I'm face-to-face with you, there's only so much I can pause. Like if I pause more than a second, it gets kind of weird and you start to worry that maybe I'm having a stroke or something. And so we have to think of things really fast. And so lying occurs more often synchronously. Technology can give us a bit of a break on that. And sometimes we even see that people are more honest in those places.

So I think the future of lying is one that will be driven primarily by psychology. So do we have the need to lie? Are there other options? Also by some of these affordances of technology like, will there be a record of this or not? And so that will continue to evolve. Now in our latest work, what we're seeing is that people are getting really good at lying even in recorded media. And they're there, you just choose the kind of lies you can do. So for example, a student could say to me, “You know, Professor Hancock, my printer's not working.” And that's an okay lie in an email because the chance of me going to his place and checking out his printer is almost zero. But if he were to lie and say something about when he submitted something and then there's a record, I can check that. Then he's going to be in trouble.

Mills: Have you done comparisons among various media? Are we more likely to lie via text or in person or over the phone? I mean, how do we lie differently in different situations?

Hancock: Right. Great question. So we've done a number of these different kinds of studies. We use diary studies where we get people to record them. We've looked at log records, lots of different ways. And what we end up finding is that text and email typically have fewer lies than say phone calls. And it's because of that record. It's because we're not forced to say things really quickly. And it's sort of been hard to talk about it lately, because with disinformation, everybody just thinks that once you're on the internet, everything is a lie. And it is true that there is a lot of deception online, but I try to differentiate between what I call the known network, so people that we have a tie with and the unknown network, so that could be anybody from the Russian spy to just somebody trying to troll me, to someone trying to scam me.

And it's difficult sometimes to differentiate those. So is there a lot of disinformation online? Yes. It's a real major problem. But does that happen in between, say Jeff and Kim who have a professional relationship? No, very unlikely. In those kind of situations we see lying is more likely to be done on the phone, so vocally or face-to-face, than it will be in an email or text message.

Mills: What's been most surprising to you while studying the impact of technology online?

Hancock: Well, it was definitely the fact that people were lying the least in email, for example, one of our first studies. I remember, it was really strange. And then when we started thinking about it and thinking about this idea of the record, once you think of that, it's so obvious. But I think a lot of deception detection researchers up until the 2000s were really focused on non-verbal cues. This is the influence of Paul Ekman and his colleagues and students that we really focused on non-verbal things, and it made it into the pop culture. Now it's pretty clear that there aren't any really strong Pinocchio noses. There's no one cue that will always tell you if somebody's lying. So the fact that it happens online versus face-to-face, the non-verbals are just less important. And instead it’s some of these affordances of online, like the record that we leave behind.

Mills: There's this idea that we're all envious of each other these days. Not because people necessarily lie on social media, but because they present the best, most idealized vision of themselves, with touched-up selfies, or elegant dinners, or beautiful vacation photos rather than the day-to-day drudgery. Is the way that people present themselves on social media authentic or is that not authentic? Is that a big lie?

Hancock: This is one of the biggest complaints people have about social media, that it's all just like people showing their greatest stuff. And I guess I have two big responses to that. One is that, when we talk to people that we've just gotten to know, or we see on the street, or we see back in the hallway, we would not talk about all the crappy things or boring things that happened to us. We would say, “Hey, I just went skiing this weekend or I did that.” That is, we're always presenting a version of ourselves. And I don't think that's inauthentic. Instead, I think people are saying, “Here's what I want to project. Here's what I value. Here's me with my friends, or here's me traveling.” And so, okay. Is it a better part of themselves? Is it them looking the best out of the 50 photos they took? Yeah. But this is also like a sweater that I'm wearing that I think I look good in. I'm not here in my underwear.

Mills: I can attest to that.

Hancock: So is this authentic?

Mills: This is an audio podcast, but he's telling the truth.

Hancock: I am clothed. And sure, it's in the Zoom era, maybe we're coming more often in pajamas, but we still think about our presentation. So I think that we're able to do more kinds of optimized presentation online, but I don't think it's necessarily inauthentic. And my colleague, Sandra Matz, has done some really nice recent work showing that some people can present really authentically online. And it turns out online behavior and being engaged a lot, can be really healthy for them. High wellbeing. Other people report behaving online in a sort of inauthentic way, where they're saying, “Well, I did post that, but that's not really who I am or that's not, I only did that once.” And that can make them actually feel bad afterwards. So I also think we can move away from social media being all one thing or the other for everyone, and start to understand that if I behave in an inauthentic way that can have some negative ramifications for me, but if I'm behaving authentically online, it can be really powerful.

Mills: There's been a lot of worry in articles about whether smartphones and social media are addictive and whether they cause depression or anxiety, especially when we're talking about kids and teens. Are these worries justified?

Hancock: Let me start by saying, these are really prevalent worries. Any parent group I talk to, any professional group like educators, friends and family with kids, this is a serious concern. Because I think everyone sees kids, especially with the pandemic, on a lot of screen time. And even before the pandemic, my colleague Nicole Ellison and I were working on a book proposal about why we wanted to bring down the anxiety. One reason is there's not a lot of great evidence that using social media is automatically good or bad for you. Instead, our survey of the literature is that it depends much more on what you're doing.

So if you spend an hour connecting with an old friend or interacting with buddies on a video game or whatever you're doing on your phone, that can be really psychologically healthy. If you're doing something that's not, like stalking an ex or obsessing on something and using social media to do that, then that could be psychologically unhealthy.

So in our review of the literature—this is my colleagues at the Stanford Social Media Lab—we looked at over 200 studies, over 200,000 participants in all of these studies. And we can basically meta-analyze it so that you say how much social media use a person was having in the study and then whatever measure of wellbeing. And there's many types. We tracked six, things from like depression and loneliness, but also social connectedness and life satisfaction. When we did that huge, giant study, the effect size was R=0.01, which is essentially zero. It's a very precise estimate of zero.

So does that mean for all the parents out there like, “Hey, don't worry about it. You know, Professor Hancock says it's not a problem.” I don't think that's exactly what I would be saying, but I would say there isn't evidence for you to be really anxious and worried. Instead, what I would think about is, for your child and your family, how is this person's use of technology working, right? And so I have some friends, their kids are doing really well, they're thriving in the pandemic. They're learning all these computer skills and their friends are working with them to do better at homework and to stay connected. Others have really struggled. And I think this is another place we're getting where we need to move away from averages and start looking at individuals.

And there's really great work coming out of Europe, and this sort of, it's called the [inaudible] Wellbeing Project, where they're taking an n-of-1 approach. Where they're finding that some young people—indeed it is about 10%—find that using social media can make them more anxious for example. And there's another group, about the same size, that using social media can be really valuable for them, right? From a point like creativity, [inaudible] connectedness. And there was a whole bunch of people in the middle that it has no effect at all. There's zero correlation.

And so I think this is another thing where we need to start thinking about the individuals, what they're doing and how it's working psychologically in their life. And I think for parents, that's an important way to start thinking about it, instead of just how much time or how frequently they're using it, which is a kind of addiction model. Instead, think about, how functional is it? Is it working? What are they doing? What skills are they getting? Are they staying connected? And I think that's a more healthy approach to tech use.

Mills: So it sounds like you're looking at what people are doing when they're online. Are you looking at attention span? It seems that one of the things that's happening to us is that we're all over the place because we're distracted. You look at one thing, you've got an article, it's got five links in it. Pretty soon you've gone down some rabbit hole and you don't know how you got there.

Hancock: Right, Kim, I fully get that. I sense my attention changing as well, and that is a concern, but I kind of try to think of the longer arc of say psychological history. And a good story to anchor us is Socrates. And he was really adamant about a technology at that time, because he was worried about its effect on human memory, which to him was very much about the human soul. And that was the alphabet. He really believed that by writing things down, we would no longer remember them in the same way. And back there you'd have poets that would be trained to remember multi-hundred line poems, we don't get our kids to do that anymore. But I don't think anybody would say, “Well, let's get rid of the alphabet because we can't do 900-line poems.”

So yes, I would strongly believe that the way we are using technology, our immediate environment is changing, our brain is changing, our neuropsychology. And one negative outcome, I think, for me especially, is I feel like I'm pretty easily distracted, like doing 20 minutes of writing on one of my papers, I put a timer down now. So I just stay focused on that for 20 minutes and then I want to change it up. But perhaps that's allowing me to deal with a whole bunch of other kinds of information in our new kind of media environment. Perhaps there's some costs, but we're adapting and we have benefits there.

Mills: Are there other ways that we can incorporate social media into our lives that will maximize the benefits and minimize the harms?

Hancock: Well, I love the way you put that. I think that is the exact way to be thinking about it. And I don't have really high level advice other than, for each person, each family, to think about the degree to which this is beneficial for me and costly. There's been a number of studies that show that people that are really showing kind of problematic internet use, say overusing Facebook. They're often dealing with some other life stress, like they've lost a family member, they've lost a job, they're going through a divorce, whether it's some kind of financial issues. And so rather than thinking, what is social media doing to that person? It'd be more like, why is that person using it in that way? What are they trying to deal with? And for many people, it can be quite functional. It can be, I'm trying to deal with this, I'm trying to get through it. There are a small number of people, a small part of the population for which it's problematic. And it could be social media, it could be video games where they've just, doing it so much that it's interfering with other parts of their lives.

And so I like that approach that you just mentioned, which is how do you optimize? How do you maximize the benefits and reduce the costs? I kind of think of it like driving cars. Cars are far more deadly than social media, way more. And in the past were even more so, but we created new tech, there's airbags. We created regulations, you have to wear seat belts. We created new norms. You can't smoke in a car with your kids, but when I was growing up, that's what every parent did. It was not a problem. Now, if somebody tried to do that, that would be, not be okay.

So our tech changes, our policy and regulation changes and our social behaviors change. And it makes cars much safer. Are they perfect? No, but we're optimizing, we're creating the most benefit from the cars we can and minimizing the cost. And there's still work to be done. Most cars produce carbon, and that's not good for our well-being in the long term either, and we're working on that. So I think it's an ongoing thing, that people will need to just focus on the way they're using their tech to think about how is this beneficial for them.

Mills: So one of your more recent research interests is how artificial intelligence has begun to affect the conversations that people have with each other. This is really a really interesting idea that I suspect a lot of people haven't really thought about. How is artificial intelligence injecting itself into our conversations and what effect does it have?

Hancock: Right. I think it's fascinating too, Kim. So I'm glad you do as well. Most people think about, when we talk with an Amazon machine or Apple's Siri, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the way that we use AI to talk to each other, so AI sitting between humans. So when you and I were trying to figure out when we were going to have this conversation, my email would suggest, say three things. If you had said, “How about Monday noon?” It might say, “Sounds good, talk to you then,” or “No, I can't.” Very simple. When I look at them, they seem like, yeah, one of those would fit the bill.

It looks like there's about 16 billion of those messages sent every day, just through Google's platform. Now we see places like Microsoft that have introduced autocomplete sentences in Word. We're seeing it in text messaging, autocorrect, autopredict. And so what's happening is, when I go to talk to you in and of these environments, I'm given suggestions on what to say. And those suggestions often feel really right. But what we know from the way human language is produced is that, when I see language or hear language, it primes my semantic network space. So it actually activates some concepts. So that's how we can speak so quickly back and forth, is we kind of become aligned linguistically with what language we're reading or hearing.

So when I'm shown, “Sounds good” or “No problem,” it might feel right. It might feel like what I would've said, but I can't know because my brain has been primed to think those are reasonable things to say. And what's even crazier is, let's say you're using some system that never uses AI, never allows AI to be part of it. You don't have the options, but I use, “Sounds good. Talk to you then,” and send that over to you. Well, now you've been primed by AI, even though you have no knowledge of it, there's no representation of that, but your brain has been changed.

Okay. So does it matter? Well, it's at scale, so we're getting 16 billion and that's certainly a low estimate because that's just Google. What we've found is some work done at Cornell, by Malte Jung and Jess Hohenstein, and also we've replicated here at Stanford with Hannah Mieczkowski, finding that these AI systems tend to be overly positive. What I mean there is that, sounds good, sounds great, those are much more common in the AI-suggested messages than what humans would use. And we've done these in experiments, we've looked at the actual Google messages themselves.

And it makes sense. If you're a corporation you want to screw up that asymmetry effectively one way. You want to overdo the positive, right? And not more often say, “No, you're an idiot.” So that's smart on the creator's side. But when you have more positivity being injected into language at the scale of Google, it raises real questions about, what does that mean to our emotional tone? Is it appropriate? Is it going to change the way we're thinking? And then there are other big questions like, what kind of discourse are those systems being trained on? If it's around trust, for example, then we know that older, white, male discourse, right? The old Walter Cronkite type style of discourse is the most trusted in our society.

If the AI is being trained on that kind of language, then it's going to prioritize white, male discourse. And so there's real big ethical questions here as well when we're using AI to inject into human-to-human communication. And I think it's a fascinating area. It has a lot of potential for good, but I'm frankly a little alarmed at how invisible it is and how at scale it is.

Mills: Ha. It's like putting Prozac in the water, right?

Hancock: Right. Oh, that's good. It'll be the title of our next paper.

Mills: So obviously, as we've been chatting here, it's clear that technology changes really quickly. Is there anything that people aren't thinking about much now that you think will be the next big question?

Hancock: I think the two things I've been thinking a lot about for the future is exactly what we were just talking about. This idea of AI-mediated communication. AI being used to help humans talk to other humans. There's new tech out that technologists know a lot about, but I think most folks don't, which is called GPT-3. This is a natural language generation system. And it is truly impressive on the kinds of language it can write. So you train it up on whatever content area you're interested in and then it produces new content. I think it raises questions for disinformation. Now you have to pay people a little bit to get a bunch of disinformation out there. With something like GPT-3, you're looking at essentially infinite amount of disinformation for really low cost. So there's these kinds of things.

Also, if you're a young student and you're interested in marketing, for example, GPT-3 will be used to create massive amounts of marketing for a much lower price. And so if you're into brand management graduating right now, and you don't know about how AI can create language, you're going to be in trouble, I think. So those are things that are right at the cusp. And there's lots of things to be worried about, lots of things to be excited about.

The other brings us back to the Zoom fatigue that we were talking about earlier. It's pretty clear that most large companies that we've been talking to are interested in a hybrid model going forward. And there's lots of reasons for it, from cost to reducing carbon, all of these things. But companies are worried about culture, their kind of corporate culture. They're worried about bringing young people in and having them get known within an organization. So I think video is here to stay.

And one question is, how do we move from just this video where you're seeing into my living room, I'm seeing into your office, there's no real organization. If you were to come into my office at Stanford, you would see bookshelf and there'd be a desk. And we would kind of know how things are going there. We've just sort of opened our homes into business. And so I think there's a lot of things to be done here around VR. So how will virtual reality help us incorporate culture at a distance? We'll see changes in the way that Zoom conferences or video conferences are done. So I think we'll see big improvements in technology. And also kind of institutional changes. Let's not have Zoom or video conferences as a default all the time, let's use it when it's important or necessary.

And I think those are going to be more of a sense of, what's the right word? More of a sense of investment in people and their places, if we're going to ask people to stay home. And so we'll start seeing corporations, I think, invest in people's home offices and do it in a ways that will help support that culture, that they're very interested in keeping. So yeah, I'm excited for the future. I think we've opened up a new kind of way of working together and connecting that could be healthier for the planet, healthier for us individually, but it just doesn't have to be video conference all time.

Mills: I'm trying to figure out how we're going to come up with some sort of a hybrid model that works, so that when some people are in the office and some people are not, like what's happening with kids in school right now, right? Where the teacher is so busy dealing with the Zoom kids that she's not dealing with the kids who were in the room.

Hancock: Right.

Mills: And are we going to experience something like that when we go back to work?

Hancock: Those hybrid situations, whether it's some people in person and some people not are the most difficult for sure, because the ones that aren't there are a little less visible. And I think that's where we might see some good advances in technology. There's likely to be changes where I can put some glasses on and see another person who's not here right now, but the glasses make sort of visible or at least selling it, not perfectly, but at least will remind me that they're here, they're part of this conversation.

Mills: Well, this has all been really interesting. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us, Dr. Hancock. It's been a pleasure to talk to you.

Hancock: Thanks, Kim. Really enjoyed the conversation.

Mills: You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology at www.speakingofpsychology.org or on Apple, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please leave us a review. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at [email protected]. That's speakingofpsychology, all one word, @apa.org. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condayan. 

Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.

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Episode 142: Technology is changing how we talk to each other, with Jeff Hancock, PhD

Save the MP3 file linked above to listen to it on your computer or mobile device.

• Learn more about Hancock’s research at the Stanford Social Media Lab .
• Nonverbal Overload: A Theoretical Argument for the Causes of Zoom Fatigue ( Technology, Mind & Behavior , 2021)
• Nonverbal Mechanisms Predict Zoom Fatigue and Explain Why Women Experience Higher Levels than Men (Social Science Research Network, 2021)
• When AI writes your email (Stanford News, 2020)
• TED Talk: The future of lying (2013)

Speaking of Psychology

Speaking of Psychology is an audio podcast series highlighting some of the latest, most important, and relevant psychological research being conducted today.

Produced by the American Psychological Association, these podcasts will help listeners apply the science of psychology to their everyday lives.

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Your host: Kim I. Mills

Kim I. Mills is senior director of strategic external communications and public affairs for the American Psychological Association, where she has worked since 2007. Mills led APA’s foray into social media and envisioned and launched APA’s award-winning podcast series Speaking of Psychology  in 2013. A former reporter and editor for The Associated Press, Mills has also written for publications including The Washington Post , Fast Company , American Journalism Review , Dallas Morning News , MSNBC.com and Harvard Business Review .

In her 30+-year career in communications, Mills has extensive media experience, including being interviewed by The New York Times , The Washington Post , The Wall Street Journal , and other top-tier print media. She has appeared on CNN, Good Morning America , Hannity and Colmes , CSPAN, and the BBC, to name a few of her broadcast engagements. Mills holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Barnard College and a master’s in journalism from New York University.

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Karunaratne, Indika & Atukorale, Ajantha & Perera, Hemamali. (2011). Surveillance of human- computer interactions: A way forward to detection of users' Psychological Distress. 2011 IEEE Colloquium on Humanities, Science and Engineering, CHUSER 2011. 10.1109/CHUSER.2011.6163779.

June 9, 2023 / 1 comment / Reading Time: ~ 12 minutes

The Digital Revolution: How Technology is Changing the Way We Communicate and Interact

This article examines the impact of technology on human interaction and explores the ever-evolving landscape of communication. With the rapid advancement of technology, the methods and modes of communication have undergone a significant transformation. This article investigates both the positive and negative implications of this digitalization. Technological innovations, such as smartphones, social media, and instant messaging apps, have provided unprecedented accessibility and convenience, allowing people to connect effortlessly across distances. However, concerns have arisen regarding the quality and authenticity of these interactions. The article explores the benefits of technology, including improved connectivity, enhanced information sharing, and expanded opportunities for collaboration. It also discusses potential negative effects including a decline in in-person interactions, a loss of empathy, and an increase in online anxiety. This article tries to expand our comprehension of the changing nature of communication in the digital age by exposing the many ways that technology has an impact on interpersonal interactions. It emphasizes the necessity of intentional and thoughtful communication techniques to preserve meaningful connections in a society that is becoming more and more reliant on technology.

Introduction:

Technology has significantly transformed our modes of communication and interaction, revolutionizing the way we connect with one another over the past few decades. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has acted as a catalyst, expediting this transformative process, and necessitating our exclusive reliance on digital tools for socializing, working, and learning. Platforms like social media and video conferencing have emerged in recent years, expanding our options for virtual communication. The impact of these changes on our lives cannot be ignored. In this article, we will delve into the ways in which technology has altered our communication and interaction patterns and explore the consequences of these changes for our relationships, mental well-being, and society.

To gain a deeper understanding of this topic, I have conducted interviews and surveys, allowing us to gather firsthand insights from individuals of various backgrounds. Additionally, we will compare this firsthand information with the perspectives shared by experts in the field. By drawing on both personal experiences and expert opinions, we seek to provide a comprehensive analysis of how technology influences our interpersonal connections. Through this research, we hope to get a deeper comprehension of the complex interactions between technology and people, enabling us to move mindfully and purposefully through the rapidly changing digital environment.

The Evolution of Communication: From Face-to-Face to Digital Connections:

In the realm of communication, we have various mediums at our disposal, such as face-to-face interactions, telephone conversations, and internet-based communication. According to Nancy Baym, an expert in the field of technology and human connections, face-to-face communication is often regarded as the most personal and intimate, while the phone provides a more personal touch than the internet. She explains this in her book Personal Connections in the Digital Age by stating, “Face-to-face is much more personal; phone is personal as well, but not as intimate as face-to-face… Internet would definitely be the least personal, followed by the phone (which at least has the vocal satisfaction) and the most personal would be face-to-face” (Baym 2015).  These distinctions suggest that different communication mediums are perceived to have varying levels of effectiveness in conveying emotion and building relationships. This distinction raises thought-provoking questions about the impact of technology on our ability to forge meaningful connections. While the internet offers unparalleled convenience and connectivity, it is essential to recognize its limitations in reproducing the depth of personal interaction found in face-to-face encounters. These limitations may be attributed to the absence of nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice, which are vital elements in understanding and interpreting emotions accurately.

Traditionally, face-to-face interactions held a prominent role as the primary means of communication, facilitating personal and intimate connections. However, the rise of technology has brought about significant changes, making communication more convenient but potentially less personal. The rise of phones, instant messaging, and social media platforms has revolutionized how we connect with others. While these digital tools offer instant connectivity and enable us to bridge geographical distances, they introduce a layer of blockage that may impact the depth and quality of our interactions. It is worth noting that different communication mediums have their strengths and limitations. Phone conversations, for instance, retain a certain level of personal connection through vocal interactions, allowing for the conveyance of emotions and tones that text-based communication may lack. However, even with this advantage, phone conversations still fall short of the depth and richness found in face-to-face interactions, as they lack visual cues and physical presence.

Internet-based communication, on the other hand, is considered the least personal medium. Online interactions often rely on text-based exchanges, which may not fully capture the nuances of expression, tone, and body language. While the internet offers the ability to connect with a vast network of individuals and share information on a global scale, it may not facilitate the same depth and authenticity that in-person or phone conversations can provide. As a result, establishing meaningful connections and building genuine relationships in an online setting can be challenging. Research and observations support these ideas. Figure 1. titled “Social Interaction after Electronic Media Use,” shows the potential impact of electronic media on social interaction (source: ResearchGate). This research highlights the need to carefully consider the effects of technology on our interpersonal connections. While technology offers convenience and connectivity, it is essential to strike a balance, ensuring that we do not sacrifice the benefits of face-to-face interactions for the sake of digital convenience.

Figure 1:  Increased reliance on electronic media has led to a noticeable decrease in social interaction.

The Limitations and Effects of Digital Communication

In today’s digital age, the limitations and effects of digital communication are becoming increasingly evident. While the phone and internet offer undeniable benefits such as convenience and the ability to connect with people regardless of geographical distance, they fall short in capturing the depth and richness of a face-to-face conversation. The ability to be in the same physical space as the person we’re communicating with, observing their facial expressions, body language, and truly feeling their presence, is something unique and irreplaceable.

Ulrike Schultze, in her thought-provoking TED Talk titled “How Social Media Shapes Identity,” delves further into the impact of digital communication on our lives by stating, “we construct the technology, but the technology also constructs us. We become what technology allows us to become” (Schultze 2015). This concept highlights how our reliance on digital media for interaction has led to a transformation in how we express ourselves and relate to others.

The influence of social media has been profound in shaping our communication patterns and interpersonal dynamics. Research conducted by Kalpathy Subramanian (2017) examined the influence of social media on interpersonal communication, highlighting the changes it brings to the way we interact and express ourselves (Subramanian 2017). The study found that online communication often involves the use of abbreviations, emoticons, and hashtags, which have become embedded in our online discourse. These digital communication shortcuts prioritize speed and efficiency, but they also contribute to a shift away from the physical action of face-to-face conversation, where nonverbal cues and deeper emotional connections can be fostered.

Additionally, the study emphasizes the impact of social media on self-presentation and identity construction. With the rise of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, individuals have a platform to curate and present themselves to the world. This online self-presentation can influence how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us, potentially shaping our identities in the process. The study further suggests that the emphasis on self-presentation and the pressure to maintain a certain image on social media can lead to increased stress and anxiety among users.

Interviews:

I conducted interviews with individuals from different age groups to gain diverse perspectives on how technology and social media have transformed the way we connect with others. By exploring the experiences of a 21-year-old student and an individual in their 40s, we can better understand the evolving dynamics of interpersonal communication in the digital age. These interviews shed light on the prevalence of digital communication among younger generations, their preference for convenience, and the concerns raised by individuals from older age groups regarding the potential loss of deeper emotional connections.

When I asked the 21-year-old classmate about how technology has changed the way they interact with people in person, they expressed, “To be honest, I spend more time texting, messaging, or posting on social media than actually talking face-to-face with others. It’s just so much more convenient.” This response highlights the prevalence of digital communication among younger generations and their preference for convenience over traditional face-to-face interactions. It suggests that technology has significantly transformed the way young people engage with others, with a greater reliance on virtual interactions rather than in-person conversations. Additionally, the mention of convenience as a driving factor raises questions about the potential trade-offs in terms of depth and quality of interpersonal connections.

To gain insight from an individual in their 40s, I conducted another interview. When asked about their experiences with technology and social media, they shared valuable perspectives. They mentioned that while they appreciate the convenience and accessibility offered by technology, they also expressed concerns about its impact on interpersonal connections. They emphasized the importance of face-to-face interactions in building genuine relationships and expressed reservations about the potential loss of deeper emotional connections in digital communication. Additionally, they discussed the challenges of adapting to rapid technological advancements and the potential generational divide in communication preferences.

Comparing the responses from both interviews, it is evident that there are generational differences in the perception and use of technology for communication. While the 21-year-old classmate emphasized convenience as a primary factor in favor of digital communication, the individual in their 40s highlighted the importance of face-to-face interactions and expressed concerns about the potential loss of meaningful connections in the digital realm. This comparison raises questions about the potential impact of technology on the depth and quality of interpersonal relationships across different age groups. It also invites further exploration into how societal norms and technological advancements shape individuals’ preferences and experiences.

Overall, the interviews revealed a shift towards digital communication among both younger and older individuals, with varying perspectives. While convenience and connectivity are valued, concerns were raised regarding the potential drawbacks, including the pressure to maintain an idealized online presence and the potential loss of genuine connections. It is evident that technology and social media have transformed the way we communicate and interact with others, but the interviews also highlighted the importance of maintaining a balance and recognizing the value of face-to-face interactions in fostering meaningful relationships.

I have recently conducted a survey with my classmates to gather insights on how technology and social media have influenced communication and interaction among students in their daily lives. Although the number of responses is relatively small, the collected data allows us to gain a glimpse into individual experiences and perspectives on this matter.

One of the questions asked in the survey was how often students rely on digital communication methods, such as texting, messaging, or social media, in comparison to engaging in face-to-face conversations. The responses indicated a clear trend towards increased reliance on digital communication, with 85% of participants stating that they frequently use digital platforms as their primary means of communication. This suggests a significant shift away from traditional face-to-face interactions, highlighting the pervasive influence of technology in shaping our communication habits.

Furthermore, the survey explored changes in the quality of interactions and relationships due to the increased use of technology and social media. Interestingly, 63% of respondents reported that they had noticed a decrease in the depth and intimacy of their connections since incorporating more digital communication into their lives. Many participants expressed concerns about the difficulty of conveying emotions effectively through digital channels and the lack of non-verbal cues that are present in face-to-face interactions. It is important to note that while the survey results provide valuable insights into individual experiences, they are not representative of the entire student population. The small sample size limits the generalizability of the findings. However, the data collected does shed light on the potential impact of technology and social media on communication and interaction patterns among students.

Expanding on the topic, I found an insightful figure from Business Insider that sheds light on how people utilize their smartphones (Business Insider). Figure 2. illustrates the average smartphone owner’s daily time spent on various activities. Notably, communication activities such as texting, talking, and social networking account for a significant portion, comprising 59% of phone usage. This data reinforces the impact of digital communication on our daily lives, indicating the substantial role it plays in shaping our interactions with others.  Upon comparing this research with the data, I have gathered, a clear trend emerges, highlighting that an increasing number of individuals primarily utilize their smartphones for communication and interaction purposes.

Figure 2: The breakdown of daily smartphone usage among average users clearly demonstrates that the phone is primarily used for interactions.

The Digital Make Over:

In today’s digital age, the impact of technology on communication and interaction is evident, particularly in educational settings. As a college student, I have witnessed the transformation firsthand, especially with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The convenience of online submissions for assignments has led to a growing trend of students opting to skip physical classes, relying on the ability to submit their work remotely. Unfortunately, this shift has resulted in a decline in face-to-face interactions and communication among classmates and instructors.

The decrease in physical attendance raises concerns about the potential consequences for both learning and social connections within the academic community. Classroom discussions, collaborative projects, and networking opportunities are often fostered through in-person interactions. By limiting these experiences, students may miss out on valuable learning moments, diverse perspectives, and the chance to establish meaningful connections with their peers and instructors.

Simon Lindgren, in his thought-provoking Ted Talk , “Media Are Not Social, but People Are,” delves deeper into the effects of technology and social media on our interactions. Lindgren highlights a significant point by suggesting that while technology may have the potential to make us better individuals, we must also recognize its potential pitfalls. Social media, for instance, can create filter bubbles that limit our exposure to diverse viewpoints, making us less in touch with reality and more narrow-minded. This cautionary reminder emphasizes the need to approach social media thoughtfully, seeking out diverse perspectives and avoiding the pitfalls of echo chambers. Furthermore, it is crucial to strike a balance between utilizing technology for educational purposes and embracing the benefits of in-person interactions. While technology undoubtedly facilitates certain aspects of education, such as online learning platforms and digital resources, we must not overlook the importance of face-to-face communication. In-person interactions allow for nuanced non-verbal cues, deeper emotional connections, and real-time engagement that contribute to a more comprehensive learning experience.

A study conducted by Times Higher Education delved into this topic, providing valuable insights. Figure 3. from the study illustrates a significant drop in attendance levels after the pandemic’s onset. Undeniably, technology played a crucial role in facilitating the transition to online learning. However, it is important to acknowledge that this shift has also led to a decline in face-to-face interactions, which have long been regarded as essential for effective communication and relationship-building. While technology continues to evolve and reshape the educational landscape, it is imperative that we remain mindful of its impact on communication and interaction. Striking a balance between digital tools and in-person engagement can help ensure that we leverage the benefits of technology while preserving the richness of face-to-face interactions. By doing so, we can foster a holistic educational experience that encompasses the best of both worlds and cultivates meaningful connections among students, instructors, and the academic community.

Figure 3:  This graph offers convincing proof that the COVID-19 pandemic and the extensive use of online submission techniques are to blame for the sharp reduction in in-person student attendance.

When asked about the impact of online submissions for assignments on physical attendance in classes, the survey revealed mixed responses. While 73% of participants admitted that the convenience of online submissions has led them to skip classes occasionally, 27% emphasized the importance of in-person attendance for better learning outcomes and social interactions. This finding suggests that while technology offers convenience, it also poses challenges in maintaining regular face-to-face interactions, potentially hindering educational and social development, and especially damaging the way we communicate and interact with one another. Students are doing this from a young age, and it comes into huge effect once they are trying to enter the work force and interact with others. When examining the survey data alongside the findings from Times Higher Education, striking similarities become apparent regarding how students approach attending classes in person with the overall conclusion being a massive decrease in students attending class which hinders the chance for real life interaction and communication. the convenience and instant gratification provided by technology can create a sense of detachment and impatience in interpersonal interactions. Online platforms allow for quick and immediate responses, and individuals can easily disconnect or switch between conversations. This can result in a lack of attentiveness and reduced focus on the person with whom one is communicating, leading to a superficial engagement that may hinder the establishment of genuine connections.

Conclusion:

Ultimately, the digital revolution has profoundly transformed the way we communicate and interact with one another. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this transformation, leading to increased reliance on digital tools for socializing, working, and learning. While technology offers convenience and connectivity, it also introduces limitations and potential drawbacks. The shift towards digital communication raises concerns about the depth and quality of our connections, as well as the potential loss of face-to-face interactions. However, it is essential to strike a balance between digital and in-person engagement, recognizing the unique value of physical presence, non-verbal cues, and deeper emotional connections that face-to-face interactions provide. By navigating the digital landscape with mindfulness and intentionality, we can harness the transformative power of technology while preserving and nurturing the essential elements of human connection.

Moving forward, it is crucial to consider the impact of technology on our relationships, mental well-being, and society. As technology continues to evolve, we must be cautious of its potential pitfalls, such as the emphasis on self-presentation, the potential for increased stress and anxiety, and the risk of forgetting how to interact in person. Striking a balance between digital and face-to-face interactions can help ensure that technology enhances, rather than replaces, genuine human connections. By prioritizing meaningful engagement, valuing personal interactions, and leveraging the benefits of technology without compromising the depth and quality of our relationships, we can navigate the digital revolution in a way that enriches our lives and fosters authentic connections.

References:

Ballve, M. (2013, June 5). How much time do we really spend on our smartphones every day? Business Insider. Retrieved April 27, 2023. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-time-do-we-spend-on-smartphones-2013-6

Baym, N. (2015). Personal Connections in the Digital Age (2nd ed.). Polity.

Karunaratne, Indika & Atukorale, Ajantha & Perera, Hemamali. (2011). Surveillance of human-       computer interactions: A way forward to detection of users’ Psychological Distress. 2011 IEEE Colloquium on Humanities, Science and Engineering, CHUSER 2011.             10.1109/CHUSER.2011.6163779.  https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Social-interaction-vs-electronic-media-use-Hours-per-day-of-face-to-face-social_fig1_254056654

Lindgren, S. (2015, May 20). Media are not social, but people are | Simon Lindgren | TEDxUmeå . YouTube. Retrieved April 27, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ5S7VIWE6k

Ross, J., McKie, A., Havergal, C., Lem, P., & Basken, P. (2022, October 24). Class attendance plummets post-Covid . Times Higher Education (THE). Retrieved April 27, 2023, from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/class-attendance-plummets-post-covid

Schultze, U. (2015, April 23). How social media shapes identity | Ulrike Schultze | TEDxSMU . YouTube. Retrieved April 27, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSpyZor-Byk

Subramanian, Dr. K .R. “Influence of Social Media in Interpersonal Communication – Researchgate.” ResearchGate.Net , www.researchgate.net/profile/Kalpathy-Subramanian/publication/319422885_Influence_of_Social_Media_in_Interpersonal_Communication/links/59a96d950f7e9b2790120fea/Influence-of-Social-Media-in-Interpersonal-Communication.pdf. Accessed 12 May 2023 .

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Is our constant use of digital technologies affecting our brain health? We asked 11 experts.

We now have a “national attention deficit,” one neuroscientist says.

by Brian Resnick , Julia Belluz , and Eliza Barclay

With so many of us now constantly tethered to digital technology via our smartphones, computers, tablets, and even watches, there is a huge experiment underway that we didn’t exactly sign up for.

Companies like Google, Facebook , Twitter , Apple, even Vox (if we’re being completely honest) are competing for our attention, and they’re doing so savvily, knowing the psychological buttons to push to keep us coming back for more. It’s now common for American kids to get a smartphone by age 10 . That’s a distraction device they carry in their pockets all the time.

The more adapted to the attention economy we become, the more we fear it could be hurting us. In Silicon Valley, we’re told more parents are limiting their kids’ screen time and even writing no-screen clauses into their contracts with nannies . Which makes us wonder: Do they know something we don’t?

If it’s true that constant digital distractions are changing our cognitive functions for the worse — leaving many of us more scatterbrained, more prone to lapses in memory, and more anxious — it means we’re living through a profound transformation of human cognition. Or could it be that we’re overreacting, like people in the past who panicked about new technologies such as the printing press or the radio?

Ever wonder how your mind works? Watch The Mind, Explained, our 5-part miniseries on the workings of the brain. Available to stream now on Netflix.

To find out, we decided to ask experts: How is our constant use of digital technologies affecting our brain health?

The answers, you’ll see, are far from certain or even consistent. There’s a lot not yet known about the connection between media use and brain health in adults and kids. The evidence that does exist on multitasking and memory, for instance, suggests a negative correlation, but a causal link is still elusive. Still, many of the researchers and human behavior experts we spoke with still feel an unease about where the constant use of digital technology is taking us.

“We’re all pawns in a grand experiment to be manipulated by digital stimuli to which no one has given explicit consent,” Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, told us. But what are the results of the experiment?

Our conversations were edited for length and clarity.

Tech companies have powerful, pervasive tools to influence, and prey on, our psychology

Richard davidson, neuroscientist at the university of wisconsin madison and founder and director of the  center for healthy minds.

I am most worried about the increase in distractability, the national attention deficit we all suffer from, and the consequences that arise from this.

Our attention is being captured by devices rather than being voluntarily regulated. We are like a sailor without a rudder on the ocean — pushed and pulled by the digital stimuli to which we are exposed rather than by the intentional direction of our own mind.

The ability to voluntarily regulate attention is more developed in humans than other species. As William James, the great psychologist, wrote in 1890, “The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will.”

But we are becoming impaired in that capacity, globally. We’re all pawns in a grand experiment to be manipulated by digital stimuli to which no one has given explicit consent. This is happening insidiously under the radar.

This, to me, underscores the urgency of training our minds with meditation so we don’t have to check our phone 80 times a day.

Christopher Burr, philosopher of cognitive science and postdoctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute

Our constant use of digital technologies is allowing intelligent systems to learn more and more about our psychological traits, with varying degrees of validity or accuracy. For instance, our smartphone’s accelerometer might be used to infer our stress levels at work, or an automated analysis of our vocal patterns could determine that we’re depressed.

But what’s concerning to me is that users are rarely fully informed that their data could be used in this way. Furthermore, there is often insufficient consideration by the companies who develop the growing variety of “health and well-being” technologies of the risks of intervening. For instance, companies may be nudging a user to change sleep patterns, mood, or dietary preferences and causing unintended harm.

In a health care setting, a doctor will try to avoid interventions that do not involve the patient in the decision-making process. Instead, doctors try to respect and promote the patient’s self-understanding and self-determination. We need to find ways of upholding this relationship in the domain of health and well-being technologies as well.

Any inference or subsequent intervention that aims at changing the behavior of a user should be fully transparent, and ideally scrutinized by an ethical review committee. This would help to minimize the chance of unintended consequences (e.g., increased stress, anxiety, or even the risk of behavioral addiction).

The research so far shows a correlation between digital media bombardment and problems with thinking. But it’s far from conclusive.

Anthony wagner, chair of the department of psychology at stanford.

The science tells us that there is a negative relationship between using more media simultaneously and working memory capacity. And we know working memory capacity correlates with language comprehension, academic performance, and a whole host of outcome variables that we care about.

The science tells us that the negative relationship exists, but the science doesn’t tell us whether the media behavior is causing the change. It’s too early to really conclude. The answer is we have no idea.

But if there’s a causal relationship, and we are transforming the underlying cognitive functional capabilities, that could have a consequence for academic performance or achievement. One would want to know that.  

The field needs to go to big science; we need to go to really large [number of study participants]. I’d take the early studies as suggestions of relationships, but now, let’s actually do the science with using design and power that would lead us to believe things might be more trustworthy in terms of the result that everyone finds.

Paul Murphy, Alzheimer’s researcher in the department of molecular and cellular biochemistry at the University of Kentucky

Neurodegenerative diseases take decades to develop, and widespread use of electronic devices like smartphones, etc. is a still a relatively recent thing. So the scary way to look at this is that we are conducting a risky experiment with some potentially serious public health consequences, and we won’t know for another decade or so if we’ve made some terrible mistakes.

In a way, this is analogous to the problems that we have on studying the long-term effects of screen time on children. We can suspect that this may be bad, but we are still many years away from knowing, and we are nowhere near knowing what sort of exposure is safe or how much might be dangerous.

There’s particular concern, and research focus, on what technology does to young, developing minds

Gary small, author of the book ibrain and director of ucla’s memory and aging research center at the semel institute for neuroscience and human behavior.

My biggest concern is with young people, whose brains are still developing from birth through adolescence. There’s a process called pruning [the process of removing neurons that are damaged or degraded to improve the brain’s networking capacity]. This could be affected through all the time using tech. We don’t have data on that — but it certainly can raise a concern.

[The constant use of technology] does affect our brain health. It has an upside and a downside. The downside is that when people are using it all the time it interferes with their memory because they are not paying attention to what’s going on. They are distracted.

As far as I know, there are not systematic studies looking at that. You can only look indirectly at this. So we have studied the frequency of memory complaints according to age. You find about 15 percent of young adults complain about their memory, which suggests there might be things going on such as distraction.

On the positive side, there are certain mental tasks, when using these technologies, that exercise our brains. Some studies have shown some video games and apps can improve working memory, fluid intelligence [problem-solving], and multitasking skills.  

Susanne Baumgartner, Center for Research on Children, Adolescents, and the Media, University of Amsterdam

I am researching the potential impacts of social media and smartphone use on adolescents’ attention and sleep. I am particularly interested in the effects of media multitasking — that is, using media while engaging in other media activities or doing homework, or being in a conversation. Most teenagers nowadays have their own smartphones and therefore access to all kinds of media content whenever they want.

We find in our studies that adolescents [in the Netherlands] who engage in media multitasking more frequently report more sleep problems and more attention problems. They also show lower academic performance. However, this does not necessarily indicate that media use was the cause of this.

When looking at sleep problems, we found that stress related to social media use was a better indicator of sleep problems than the amount of social media use. This seems to indicate that it is not social media use per se that is related to sleep problems, but rather whether adolescents feel stressed by their usage. 

So overall, I am still a bit hesitant about the conclusion that digital media use is detrimental to adolescents’ cognitive development. At this point, we need more studies that truly investigate these impacts in long-term studies and with better measurements (e.g., tracking smartphone behavior instead of just asking teenagers about their media use).

And we should also not forget to look at potential beneficial effects. For example, studies conducted by other researchers found that specific types of media use, such as playing action video games, can be beneficial for cognitive abilities.

Elizabeth Englander, director and founder of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center

One of the most striking things we’ve been looking at in the lab is that teens often tell us almost all characteristics of social media can make them feel more anxious.

If they see what their friends are doing, that can make them feel anxious about not being a part of it. If they don’t see what friends are doing, that also makes them anxious — they worry about being left out. The times they don’t feel anxious is when they are using social media and actively engaging with their friends in a positive way. But at other times, it does seem to increase anxiety.

For a deeper look at the research on teen, tech, and depression check out our recent feature: Have smartphones really destroyed a generation? We don’t know.

That’s striking. It’s a model of an interaction where there’s this strong reward system — and that it kind of seems to keep kids on an emotional tether. One girl described it as a leash.

In terms of direct evidence [showing mobile phones and social media impede human connections in person], it’s limited. But think about it: How do people connect with each other? They do it through social skills. And how do you build social skills? There’s only one way we are aware of — through face-to-face interactions with other peers your age.

When you have a society where other things are displacing face-to-face social interactions, it’s reasonable to assume those are going to impact the development of social skills. It does seem to be what we are seeing now.

We need to find a way to balance the risks of ever-present digital technology with its rewards

heather kirkorian, associate professor in the school of human ecology at the university of wisconsin madison  .

One thing is clear: The impact of digital media depends partly on how we use them.

In the case of infants and young children, researchers often refer to content and context . That is, the impact of digital media on young children depends on what children are doing and how those activities are structured by the adults who are — or are not — in the room.

For instance, we might compare video-chatting with a grandparent versus watching an educational TV show versus playing a violent video game versus using a finger-painting app. Young children are the most likely to benefit from digital media when the content is engaging, educational, and relevant to their own lives; when they use it together with others — when parents help children understand what they see onscreen and connect it to what they experience offscreen. And when digital media activities are balanced with offscreen activities like playing outside, playing with toys, reading books with caregivers, and getting the recommended amount of sleep.

So the research with teens and adults isn’t much different. For instance, the effects of social media depend on whether we use them to connect with loved ones throughout the day and get social support versus compare our lives to the often highly filtered lives of others and expose ourselves to bullying or other negative content.

Similarly, the impact of video games on attention depends on the type of game that is played and the type of attention that is being measured.

Adam Gazzaley, professor of neurology at University of California San Francisco and author of The Distracted Mind

I’ve written a lot about the direct impact of digital technology on emotional regulation, attention, and stress, as driven by overexposure to information, rapid reward cycles, and simultaneous engagement in multiple tasks. These are certainly reasons to be concerned.

But personally, I find one of the most challenging aspects of our digital preoccupation to be the displacement it induces from nature, face-to-face communication, physical activity, and quiet, internally focused moments.

I’m currently deep into a trip to New Zealand with limited technology exposure so that I can focus on connecting with friends, nature, and my own mind. I realize now more than ever before how important these experiences are for my brain health. 

That being said, I do believe that technology can offer us an incredible opportunity to enhance our cognition and enrich our lives. Figuring this out is our next great technological and human challenge. 

The case for companies making products that are less addictive

Ethan zuckerman, director of the center for civic media at mit.

With any new technology, there is always a pattern of people saying, “This is addictive, and it’s destroying society as we know it.” There’s often something real to those concerns. There’s also often something which is moral panic.

One of the ways you sense moral panic is that it tends to be focused on our kids or sexuality. So when you see someone saying we are going to have a lost generation, or that Bluetooth is leading youth to have sex at unprecedented rates, these are always indications of moral panic rather than concern about real things.

From what I can tell, parenting culture in Silicon Valley is this performative craziness. I’m going to virtue-signal harder than anyone else. I am a better parent than you are because I put crazier restrictions on my family than you do. [Banning screens] feels very consistent with that.

The reason those stories are satisfying is you come out of it thinking, “What assholes. If they think this stuff isn’t good, why do they continue to do it?” Then you have folks like Jaron Lanier who say, “Quit your social media now; it’s bad for you.” That feels irresponsible in another way — there are clearly billions of people who aren’t going to quit social media in part because it’s become a critical communications tech. It’s core to how they interact with the world. For a lot of work and play, it’s essential these days.

So what I want to say to Lanier is make it better. We’re not putting this genie back in the bottle. There’s a lot of stuff from it that’s turned out to be good. There’s no one seriously proposing we’re going to turn all of this off.

The interesting question is what are the real problems and how do we address them and make them better? How would you mitigate those harmful effects? What are the positive effects we want out of it?

Nir Eyal, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

Technology is like smoking cannabis. 

Ninety percent of people who smoke cannabis do not get addicted. But the point is that you’re going to get some people who misuse a product; if it’s sufficiently good and engaging, that’s bound to happen. The solution to that is we should fix the harm — not the technology itself, but the harm it does. I want companies to look for the addicts and help them. 

Lots of companies make addictive products — I guarantee somebody is addicted to Vox. The good news is that these companies know how much you’re using their product. So if they wanted to, they could simply look at their log and say, “Look, if you use the product 30 hours a week, 40 hours a week, we’re gonna reach out and say, ‘Hey, can we help you moderate your behavior? You’re showing a behavioral pattern consistent with someone who may be struggling with an addiction. How can we help?’”

And you know what, the fact is it would actually make the platform better. It is in their interest to do this. I know that some of them are working on it.

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Chapter 6: 21st-century media and issues

6.10.2 Social media and communication (research essay)

Lindsey Matier

English 102, April 2021

Communication is extremely important in today’s world, whether it be verbal or nonverbal. It can take place through many different forms such as through writing, speaking, listening and physical actions. These forms of communication evolve and continue to improve over time. As humans, we rely on communication for almost everything and it is a way of life. Communication has evolved from talking to writing letters to texting or talking over the phone. Every time a new form of communication is brought up and becomes more popular, we have to adapt and evolve to that new lifestyle. Throughout all the new forms of communication and ways of evolving, social media has been one of the most influential so far. Social media has allowed us to create new ways of communicating, such as texting or posting through different apps. It can connect us with people all over the world and give us a platform to express ourselves in ways that have not been possible before. While social media started off as a small form of technology, it has morphed into aspects of our everyday life. Now there are apps for everything from social media profiles to online shopping. While social media and technology itself has evolved, this has also affected our communication with each other and the world. Social media has created a fast track for information in a matter of seconds. It can give people a platform with millions of followers overnight for doing practically anything. It can help people express themselves in new ways and connect with people who have similar interests. The end goal of social media is to make people happy and ultimately make lives easier.

Introduction

With all this being said, it is evident that social media is in our everyday lives and will continue to change. It has a very strong grip on society as social media usage continues to rise throughout the years. Generalizing social media, we are exposed to forms of media at almost all times of the day. Answering the question of what media is will help give a better understanding of social media as a whole. Media can be defined as a way of mass communication. This could include siting in the car listening to ads on the radio all the way to scrolling on twitter. We are exposed to social media less often than generalized media, but it tends to come in greater quantities when exposed. For example, for people that wake up and check twitter it is an instant flood of information with every scroll. Everything from politics to sports to celebrity news is available at the fingertips. The concern is not all focused on the overwhelming information, but also the overwhelming number of comments and opinions. If we wanted to debate or talk about something before social media it had to be done in person, face to face. Now with social media, we are able to fight with people in comment sections on a backup account with a different name and no connection to who we really are. This new form of communication takes away the vulnerability of speaking to people and having genuine conversation, and makes up for it in internet trolls. Overall, social media is impacting the way we communicate with each other and the real questions are: Is social media impacting us in a positive or negative way? Do the positive aspects outweigh the negative aspects? Is social media hindering the way we communicate in person with each other? Is their more room for improvement when it comes to dealing with communication in the social media spectrum? How is social media impacting younger generation’s communication versus older generation’s communication? How can we help improve our communication skills on social media and in real life?

Personal Research 

Along with the other studies that I found from the sources I chose, I also conducted my own study to determine more accurate and recent data. I asked students mostly within high school and college range questions relating to social media and communication. I tried to get a wide range of data dealing with social media apps, screen time, and overall communication as a result of social media. I expected to see almost all negative responses about social media and communication. I figured that most people would respond saying that it has affected them negatively rather than positively, but the results were different compared to what I expected.

The first questions I asked had to do with social media itself. I asked questions about their most used social media apps, screen time, what age they were allowed to start using social media, and whether or not they think social media has had a negative or positive impact on them. As expected, most of the social media apps were some of the most popular ones like Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok. Overall, the average screen time for all apps was evenly split between 4-6 and 6-8 hours, which I also expected. Something that did surprise me was the amount of time spent on certain social media apps. The data was split pretty evenly three ways and all between 1-4 hours. The next two questions dealt with when they group surveyed started using social media. I asked these questions because a lot of the points I want to discuss later in my paper have to deal with age and whether younger generations are suffering when it comes to communication. More than half the people surveyed said that they wished that they had waited to get social media until they were older. Some said that it is not appropriate for younger kids and that it is just toxic in general. Something that I really like that a couple people mentioned was that in reality, social media at a young age is stupid and useless. A lot of people said they wish they would have enjoyed their childhood more and they would be more extroverted now if they had not been exposed that early. The last question of this section that I asked was if they thought social media has had a more positive or negative impact on them. Overall, the data was split but leaning slightly towards the more positive side. The positive answers mostly dealt with being able to talk to stay in contact with people and meeting new friends. The negative answers all related to mental health and feeling bad about themselves. A lot of people said it is toxic and very controlling and takes up too much of our time.

The next set of questions I asked had to do more with communication and interaction with and without social media. I asked questions like how they feel about social media and how it has impacted their communication, their mental health, and if it has made our lives easier. I decided to ask questions like these because I figured I would get a wide range of responses and a lot of people’s different opinions. I started off by asking if people are an introvert or an extrovert to get an idea of what the responses would be like, and 66% said somewhere in between the two. The response for the next question really shocked me because I received such a one-side response. I asked if they think social media has impacted their communication and the way they interact with others and 75% (18/24 people) said yes. This is the information that I was looking for along with the next two questions. The next question asked if they think social media has negatively impacted their mental health and 50% said yes. I also plan on using this as a research question to show that social media can affect our mental health and therefore affect the way we interact with and around other people. The last two questions are similar but the responses were both very good. Almost everyone answered yes to the question asking if social media has made our lives easier. Everyone that answered yes said they think so because it helps them talk to friends, stay in touch with people they do not see as much, and meet new people that they are comfortable talking to. The people that said no also made good points such as it takes over our lives and it is filled with too much hate and cancel culture. I agree with both sides and am very happy that people can feel a positive response especially when it comes to communicating with other people online. The last question I asked was used to wrap up the whole survey and topic. I asked if they think social media has made our generation’s communication improve or worsen. The data was pretty evenly split, and most people gave a positive and a negative. The people that said improve gave that answer because they said it broadens our communication and allows us to talk to people at a wider range. The people who said it has made it worse all said that it is ruining our face-to-face interaction and causing us to lose emotion. They said that some people do not even know how to have a proper in person conversation and that they are too dependent on their phones. Overall, I agree with both arguments that people made but I do think that the positives outweigh the negatives in most of these situations and questions.

Research Questions

The first question I want to ask has to deal with the overall social media and communication connection and has multiple other questions I would like to cover within it. The main question is: Is social media hindering the way we communicate with each other? I also want to touch on questions like: Is social media impacting us in a positive or negative way? Do the positives outweigh the negatives? The second set of research questions I have is: Is their more room for improvement when it comes to dealing with communication in the social media spectrum? How can we help improve our communication skills on social media and in real life? How is social media impacting younger generation’s communication versus older generation’s communication?

Research Question One

Social media and communication have a direct connection to each other and both have a strong impact on the outcome of the other. My first research question has to do with that. My questions center around how social media has impacted our communication, and whether or not it is positive or negative. First, I think it is important to note the changes and different characteristics that come into play when talking about this. Things like age and problems going on in our world can affect our social media usage and communication. While we connect to people on a deeper level when talking to the in person, social media has also given us a newer and more broad way of communicating. The article “How Social Media Affects Our Ability to Communicate” by Stacey Hanke, talks about different ways social media has impacted our communication. Social media has become so relevant in our day to day lives and Hanke describes it in a couple different ways. She describes it as information binging and the fear of missing out, social graces and conversational boredom. Within these, she explains how social media has become an excuse and escape to talk to people face to face. Hanke also talks about how even though it is limiting our in person communication, it can sometimes make communicating in general easier, by being able to talk to each other in just a few words (Hanke 1). In another article by Ryan J. Fuller titled “The Impact of Social Media Use on Our Social Skills”, he discusses similar topics to Hanke’s article but also brings up more positive attributes of social media. Fuller starts of his article by giving some statistics, stating that 75% of teens own cellphones and 25% of them using it for social media, and also says that they use 7.5 hours a day using it (Fuller 1). I am glad that this was brought up because it is important to know how much time is spent on social media, scrolling through feed. Next, Fuller starts to discuss some of the benefits of social media. He briefly explains how social media is beneficial because we are able to stay in touch with our friends and family, and share important parts of our lives with them. He also explains how it helps people reach out to new friends and provide themselves with more opportunities (Fuller 1). Overall, I really like that he mentioned these because it is important to keep in mind the vast majority of social media and communication. While some use it for more simpler purposes likes just keeping up to date with what is going on in the world, others use it to make new friends, find new job opportunities, and stay in touch with people. Another topic I find important when it comes to answering this research question is how Covid affected everything. With the pandemic, we were left inside with nothing to do but what was at our fingertips. This pandemic increased social media usage drastically. The article “Social Media Insights Into US Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Longitudinal Analysis of Twitter Data” by Danny Valdez et al, shows extensive research into determining just how much social media usage in the United States increased during the pandemic. They did experiments and surveys to determine multiple responses to research questions and show how much we rely on social media to communicate with each other. During the pandemic, everyone spent more time on their social media and their phone in general, probably more than they would like to admit. The article helps give more insight into this claim. There is the idea that social media was meant as an addition to our lives. For some people, it has become an addiction and a new piece of their life. The article focuses on how social media could be a toxic place and have a negative effect on our mental health. The time period for this information focuses around the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data from Twitter, Valdez created a study to determine the mood of people during the pandemic and the usage throughout (Valdez et al 2). Collecting tweets with certain hashtags and during time periods, the goal was to determine how much the pandemic affected people’s moods, and how much they put out and shared on social media. They used hashtags, timeline data, and tweets from different periods such as the first lockdown, different stay at home orders, etc. Given the responses to the data, they were able to determine the increase in social media usage. We cannot determine if this had a positive or negative effect on the people who were using Twitter, but we can infer that social media is becoming a key part of our lives. Not being able to talk to people as much in person during the first few months of the pandemic greatly affected communication, in positive and negative ways. Communication over the phone increased due to the amount of free time that people had and were able to spend talking to others. Contrary to that, in person communication also decreased given that people were not really allowed to leave the house. The next article by Tayebi et al, “The Role of Information Systems in Communication Through Social Media” focuses a lot about how we have evolved over time with social media and communication. They start off by talking about how social networks are like social media societies. They explain it by resembling it to a human society, as it is filled with people communicating, regardless of time or place. They also exemplify other aspects such as emotional support, information, emotions (Tayebi 2). Social media is constantly looked at through such a negative light due to some of the major bad events that have taken place. While it can be difficult at times to look past the negatives, it is important to recognize and acknowledge the positives. The growth of scientific research would not be possible without the amount of information received from the media (Tayebi 3). Without social media and media in general, we would not be where we are today as a society. As mentioned earlier, it is so easy to get lost in the negative aspects of social media and discard the positive ones. Positive parts of social media such as widespread communication and unlimited access to information makes it all worth it. Staying on topic with positive aspects of social media and communication, social media in the workplace has also broken down barriers for communication. The article “A Guide to the Successful Use of Social Media in the Workplace” by Clark Boyd gives insight into how social media has improved the workplace, and ultimately communication and interaction as a whole. Companies can use social media as a form of branding and way to communicate their products (Boyd 4). Boyd states, “Harvard Business Review finds that 82% of employees believe social media improves work relationships. Left to their own devices, your teams will connect and communicate on social networks, both inside and outside the office.” This directly relates to the research question asking whether social media hinders our communication with each other. Social media also helps when it comes to dealing with complaints placed online. By seeing these through social media, it can help the company communicate either with the person or their company the concerns that are being stated (Boyd 9). Overall, it is safe to say that social media has directly affected communication throughout different aspects of our lives.

Research Question Two

My second set of research questions has a lot to do with the future and how we can improve. Questions such as: Is their more room for improvement when it comes to dealing with communication in the social media spectrum? How can we help improve our communication skills on social media and in real life? How is social media impacting younger generation’s communication versus older generation’s communication? The article “What is Literacy” by James Paul Gee talks a lot about the basics of communication. I find this an important article to talk about before I go into more detail with this second research question. Gee explains discourse as a socially accepted way of speaking, thinking, and acting (Gee 1). It is important to note this because social media has changed that discourse for us. We no longer communicate and interact the same way in which we use to therefore almost giving us a new discourse. Another thing Gee discusses is identity kits. Gee explains identity kits as “appropriate costumes and instructions on how to act and talk” (Gee 2). This relates to social media because there is a certain way we communicate online that we wouldn’t do in person. For example, we use emojis and abbreviations to communicate on social media or over text, but this is something we would not do when communicating face-to-face. There are also some basic well-known rules of social media that follow along the lines of an identity kit. Such as, for Instagram it is a common idea not to like people’s pictures from too long ago. When you say this aloud it sounds like it is not a big deal and silly almost, but for people that use social media it is something that makes sense. The next article is going to focus more on the question that has to do with room for improvement of communication. The article “The Positive Effect of Not Following Others on Social Media” by Francesca Valsesia, Davide Proserpio, and Joseph C. Nunes involves how we deal with social media and how we react to it. The article has a lot to do with pyramid schemes and marketing schemes on social media, simply due to follower count. Social media has a lot of power over us and the content we see. Influencers have too much impact on what we see every day and this overall effects our communication (Valsesia 1). Social media feeds us information at our fingertips, whether it be true or false. Valsesia is trying to get the point across that social media has no impact on our lives without the phone and therefore, having a smaller follower count is better for our communication and overall wellbeing in the first place. Leading into my next article, social media can have a huge impact on the younger generation. This leads into part of my second research question dealing with the younger generation and their communication. The article “The Impact of Social Media on Youth Mental Health: Challenges and Opportunities” by Jacqueline Nesi shows how social media is a very complex brand of information and makes it complicated for everyone. Younger kids having access to it and multiple devices like computers and phones makes it that much more difficult. There are a lot of positives and negatives for younger kids having access to social media and the internet in general. It has an impact on their mental health and studies show it leads to signs of depression, body dysmorphia, eating disorders (Nesi 2). It can also affect their communication and outward identity due to things such as bullying, internet drama, and behavioral problems. While it does have serious negative risks, social media also can bring a lot of new positive ones. Things like creative ideas, humor and entertainment, and being able to explore their identity are all really great positives that social media gives us (Nesi 4). Most of them using it as a way to connect with friends and family and help them feel a sense of acceptance and belonging (Nesi 4). Similarly to this, social media has given a great outlet for kids and young adults to speak out on issues going on in the world. The article “Building Bridges: Exploring the Communication Trends and Perceived Sociopolitical Benefits of Adolescents Engaging in Online Social Justice Efforts” by Mariah Elsa Kornbluh goes into detail about the racial injustices in the world and how they are communicated through social media. Social media networks can help connect kids to different backgrounds and aspects of their lives (Kornbluh 1). Kornbluh expresses how a society only can flourish under civic engagement and being able to express ourselves, and social media is helping us do that. It is helping the younger generation prepare for the civic role that they will undergo (Kornbluh 2). Social media helps play a major role in participating in political movements and bringing awareness to topics (Kornbluh 3). This all is done by the younger generation and would not be possible without them. So, while it is easy to look at the negative parts of social media and how it effects the younger generation, it also brings great awareness to real life problems in our world. This last article I wanted to go over dealing with this research question has to do with the pandemic. The article “Responses to COVID-19 in Higher Education: Social Media Usage for Sustaining Formal Academic Communication in Developing Countries” by Abu Elnasr E. Sobaih, Ahmed M. Hasanein and Ahmed E. Abu Elnasr briefly talks about communication with social media in higher education systems. Education systems had to switch from in person learning and communication to online learning, which was a struggle for everyone. Throughout the time that this took place, results showed that social media had a positive effect on students dealing with this (Sobaih 1). Students used social media to build a community and help support each other through this rough time. Through these results, proper usage of social media can be shown as a positive result for a new era of learning (Sobaih 1). This is just one more reason why social media can help us improve our future.

After answering my research questions, it has become clear to me that while social media does have negative aspects, the positive aspects outweigh them. Between the articles and my own research, I have enough evidence to prove that social media does effect communication, but in a more positive way. The way we act and present ourselves is heavily influenced by social media and communication between generations are different and can be seen that way. It is important to note the accomplishments we have made as a society with social media and the media in general. It has helped connect families, provide support groups, and provide entertainment in desperate times. Our communication has changed because of social media but has changed and helped us for the better in the long run. Keeping social media a positive place and staying away from the toxic people on it will only help us grow and learn new things about ourselves.

Works Cited

Boyd, Clark. “A Guide to Using Social Media in the Workplace in 2021.”  The Blueprint , The Blueprint, 13 May 2020, www.fool.com/the-blueprint/social-media-in-the-workplace/.

https://www.fool.com/the-blueprint/social-media-in-the-workplace/

D, Valdez, et al. “Social Media Insights Into US Mental Health During the Covid-19 Pandemic: Longitudinal Analysis of Twitter Data.”  Journal of Medical Internet Research  , vol. 22, no. 12, 14 Dec. 2020, pp. 1438–8871.

http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.ulib.csuohio.edu:2050/eds/detail/detail? vid=8&sid=ff59b04c-b868-44cd-b864-4538e112a2ea%40sessionmgr103&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#AN=33284783&db=mnh

J, Nesi. “The Impact of Social Media on Youth Health: Challenges and Opportunities.”  North Carolina Medical Journal , vol. 81, no. 2, 2020, pp. 116–121.

http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.ulib.csuohio.edu:2050/eds/detail/detail?vid=10&sid=ff59b04c-b868-44cd-b864-4538e112a2ea%40sessionmgr103&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#AN=32132255&db=mnh

Gee, James Paul. “What is literacy.”  Negotiating academic literacies: Teaching and learning  across languages and cultures  (1998): 51-59.

https://academic.jamespaulgee.com/pdfs/Gee%20What%20is%20Literacy.pdf

Hanke, Stacey. “How Social Media Affects Our Ability to Communicate.”  Thrive Global , 13  Sept. 2018, thriveglobal.com/stories/how-social-media-affects-our-ability-to-communicate/.

https://thriveglobal.com/stories/how-social-media-affects-our-ability-to-communicate/

http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.ulib.csuohio.edu:2050/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=467b825c-34f8-4e47-95df-e5b2b61bbaf4%40sessionmgr4006

Kornbluh, Mariah Elsa. “Building Bridges.”  Youth & Society , vol. 51, no. 8, 2017, pp. 1104–1126., doi:10.1177/0044118×17723656.

https://journals-sagepub-com.proxy.ulib.csuohio.edu/doi/pdf/10.1177/0044118X17723656

Retchin, Sarah, et al. “The Impact of Social Media Use on Social Skills.”  New York Behavioral Health , 1 Dec. 2020, newyorkbehavioralhealth.com/the-impact-of-social-media-use-on-social-skills/.

https://newyorkbehavioralhealth.com/the-impact-of-social-media-use-on-social-skills/

Sobaih, Abu Elnasr E., et al. “Responses to COVID-19 in Higher Education: Social Media Usage for Sustaining Formal Academic Communication in Developing Countries.”  MDPI , Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 12 Aug. 2020, www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/16/6520/htm.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/16/6520/htm

Tayeb, Seyed Mohammad, et al. “The Role of Information Systems in Communication through Social Media.”  International Journal of Data and Network Science , vol. 3, no. 3, 2019, pp. 245–268., doi:10.5267/j.ijdns.2019.2.002.

http://www.growingscience.com/ijds/Vol3/ijdns_2019_15.pdf

Valsesia, Francesca, et al. “The Positive Effect of Not Following Others on Social Media .”  Journal of Marketing Research  , vol. 57, no. 6, Dec. 2020, pp. 1152–1168.

https://www.francescavalsesia.com/uploads/1/0/5/1/105151509/the_positive_effect_of_not_following_others_on_social_media.pdf

Understanding Literacy in Our Lives by Lindsey Matier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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More From Forbes

Has technology killed face-to-face communication.

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Most of us use our cell phones and computers to inform, make requests of, and collaborate with co-workers, clients and customers. The digital age has connected people across the world, making e-commerce and global networking a reality. But does this reliance on technology, also mean we are losing the ability to effectively communicate with each other in person?

Ulrich Kellerer thinks so. He is a leadership expert, international speaker, and author. According to Kellerer, “When it comes to effective business communication, over reliance on technology at work can be a hindrance, especially when it ends up replacing face-to-face, human interaction.”

Carol Kinsey Goman: You were the founder and CEO of Faro Fashion in Munich, Germany. What did you discover about business communication in this role?

Ulrich Kellerer: The digital age has fundamentally changed the nature and function of business communication. It has blurred international boundaries allowing people to connect with each other across the world. Communication is mobilized and instantaneous, and it is easier than ever to access and share information on a global scale.

However, I’ve also seen the negative impact of digital communication on business both internally and externally. While digital methods themselves are not detrimental – in fact many devices help us boost productivity, increase and inspire creativity -- it is our intensifying relationship with the digital environment that leads to unhealthy habits that not only distract us from the “present,” but also negatively impact communication effectiveness.

Goman: In the midst of a digital age, I believe that face-to-face is still the most productive and powerful communication medium. An in-person meeting offers the best opportunity to engage others with empathy and impact. It builds and supports positive professional connections that we can’t replicate in a virtual environment. Would you agree?

Kellerer: Connection is critical to building business relationships. Anyone working in sales knows that personal interactions yield better results. According to Harvard research, face-to-face requests were 34 times more likely to garner positive responses than emails. Communication in sales is complicated. It requires courtesies and listening skills that are simply not possible on digital platforms.

Interpersonal communication is also vital for a business to function internally.  While sending emails is efficient and fast, face-to-face communication drives productivity. In a recent survey, 67% of senior executives and managers said their organization’s productivity would increase if superiors communicated face-to-face more often.

Goman: In my research on the impact of body language on leadership effectiveness I’ve seen the same dynamic. In face-to-face meetings our brains process the continual cascade of nonverbal cues that we use as the basis for building trust and professional intimacy. As a communication medium, face-to-face interaction is information-rich. People are interpreting the meaning of what you say only partially from the words you use. They get most of your message (and all of the emotional nuance behind the words) from vocal tone, pacing, facial expressions and body language. And, consciously or unconsciously, you are processing the instantaneous nonverbal responses of others to help gauge how well your ideas are being accepted.

Kellerer: While digital communication is often the most convenient method, face-to-face interaction is still by far the most powerful way to achieve business goals. Having a personal connection builds trust and minimizes misinterpretation and misunderstanding. With no physical cues, facial expressions/gestures, or the ability to retract immediately, the risk of disconnection, miscommunication, and conflict is heightened.

Goman: Human beings are born with the innate capability to send and interpret nonverbal signals. In fact, our brains need and expect these more primitive and significant channels of information. When we are denied these interpersonal cues, the brain struggles and communication suffers. In addition, people remember much more of what they see than what they hear -- which is one reason why you tend to be more persuasive when you are both seen and heard.

In addition to eye contact, gestures, facial expressions and body postures, another powerful nonverbal component (and one that comes solely in face-to-face encounters) is touch . We are programmed to feel closer to someone who’s touched us. For example, a study on handshakes by the Income Center for Trade Shows showed that people are twice as likely to remember you if you shake hands with them.

Kellerer: Business leaders must create environments in which digital communication is used strategically and personal communication is practiced and prioritized. Technology is a necessary part of business today but incorporating the human touch is what will give businesses the competitive edge in the digital marketplace.

Goman: Agreed!

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Does Technology Cut Us Off from Other People?

I keep technology at a little distance, which makes me unusual among millennials. Four out of five of my peers—those born after 1980—own mobile devices, which are always on, always on us, and always connected to social media like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

But while all my friends seem wired into their smartphones 24-7, I’ve turned off notifications on my iPhone and I participate in the occasional technology Shabbat .

It’s hard to shake the feeling that, although smartphones open the door to new kinds of social connection, they burn through precious social capital —the web of social networks that research says can help us to be happier , healthier , and better employed .

I’m not alone. In fact, Greater Good contributor Barbara Fredrickson published a study last year that suggests smartphone use may be taking a toll “on our biological capacity to connect with other people.”

But do digital devices and social media really disconnect us from the flesh-and-blood people in our lives? Or can mobile devices actually add to our social capital? Researchers are starting to explore these questions—and the answers suggest that our social media presence need not detract from our real-world social connections. In fact, technology can actually increase our social capital, if we know how to use it.

When it’s smart to use smartphones

First up, do smartphones actually reduce our social capital?

To find out, a team of researchers at the University of Florida surveyed 339 students about the intensity of their smartphone use and online social networking. They found that, on average, participants reported spending about 100-200 minutes per day using the Internet and about 30-90 minutes using social networks. Then the students answered questions about four dimensions of social capital:

• Trust , measured with questions like, “Generally speaking, there is someone I can turn to for advice about making very important decisions.”
• Organizational participation , measured simply by their number of group memberships.
• Political participation , measured by how often they watched political debates or participated in demonstrations.
• Network resources , measured by the people of people they know who could provide different resources, such as a holiday homes abroad or access to professional journals.

The results? Across the board, heavy smartphone use was positively associated with all four measures of social capital. So it seems that all those people who are glued to their phones are not necessarily more socially isolated.

But this relationship only exists to the extent that the smartphones were being used for their social networking capabilities, as opposed to random Internet surfing. In other words, only those who used their smartphones for social media like Google+ or Twitter knew more people, were more involved with organizations, participated more actively in politics, and perceived more trust among their peers.

This study was of young people. Do people on the other end of the age spectrum also benefit from online social networking?

Social media help older people stay connected

Studies have shown that older adults—those 65 years and up—who use social networking sites benefit from better health, reduce their chances of cognitive decline, and prevent premature death. But only four percent of Facebook users in the United States are over 65, which suggests that older adults may be missing valuable opportunities to strengthen their social ties through social media.

A team of Mexican researchers designed their own type of social media platform, called Tlatoque, which borrows many of its features from popular networking sites (e.g., it has a news feed, status updates, and photo sharing capabilities). After a few weeks, the researchers looked at how interactions through Tlatoque influenced social capital and interactions in the real world.

They found that the system significantly enriched these adults’ relationships with close friends and family. The authors suggest that’s because the system helped them become more aware of what their relatives were up to, enabling the sharing of information with friends and family who prefer social media to the “more traditional” ways of staying in touch. This catalyzed and enriched real-world conversations, according to the results.

While Tlatoque might not be coming to an app store near you anytime soon, this study is the first to suggest that we can use our online social capital to enrich our in-person encounters. It’s a good first step toward understanding the relationship between online and offline social capital—and how both of these networks might influence one another.

It takes a village on Twitter

The results of these two studies seem conclusive: Together, smartphones and social media can increase your social capital.

But are all forms of social capital created equal? Another study, recently published in the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction , looked at how the micro-blogging platform Twitter builds different types of social capital.

On Twitter, all messages posted are publicly available in the global feed of “tweets.” But to filter this feed, users can choose to follow other users. That’s a great way to learn about a new job, read about different experiences and opinions, or feel like part of a group that’s bigger than yourself.

These types of bonds, which are largely informational, are described by researchers as bridging social capital , which the authors loosely define as, “the formation of rather weak ties between people from different networks.” Bonding social capital , on the other hand, has a more emotional tone. Bonding happens in homogenous groups of like-minded individuals, like friends or family. So if bonding capital is about connecting more deeply, then bridging capital is about connecting more widely.

If you were to guess, which one would you say Twitter helps to build?

The researchers had a hypothesis that it was both. So they asked 264 Twitter users to report their number of followers and followees, estimate the number of minutes they spend on Twitter on an average day, and answer a few questions that would approximate a measure of both bridging and bonding social capital. A typical question for bridging social capital asks if “interacting with people on Twitter makes me feel like part of a greater community”; a question for bonding social capital asks if, on Twitter, “there are several people I trust to help solve my problems.”

Twitter did indeed seem associated with both bonding and bridging social capital—but only if the number people you interact with on Twitter fell within a goldilocks zone of not too few and not too many.

More on Social Connections

How healthy are your social networks? Take the quiz !

Learn how weak ties and strong ties work together to build our social capital.

Learn about the link between happiness and social connection .

Explore how social connections increase kindness .

Explore the health benefits of social connection here and here .

For example, people who spent the most spent more time on Twitter and followed more users reported more bridging capital. This is because the more you follow, the more opportunity you have to gain exposure to new ideas—or, as the authors say, to “expand your horizons” beyond your “narrow daily existence.” So is it best to follow as many people as possible? The answer is no, according to this study—when we follow too many people, we risk information overload. As the authors caution us, “There can be too much of a good thing.” More is better, but only up to a point.

When it comes to bonding social capital, a similar principle applies. They found that a user with an engaged and dedicated audience of followers is likely to feel a great sense of emotional support. But if that user’s follower network becomes too large, it becomes an abstract faceless mass, “which increases the user’s psychological distance from [their] followers.”

So to build the most bridging and bonding capital on Twitter, you want a village of followers, not a teeming metropolis.

What might this have to do with our offline social capital? While it wasn’t the main focus of this study, researchers found that those who feel more connected in their everyday lives also seemed to feel more connected to their online peers, not unlike the elderly participants of Tlatoque. So in some way, there is a relationship between your offline self and your online profile. The Tlatoque study even suggests that online connections can support the offline ones.

Taken together, these three studies hint at a compelling story—that social networking services can be a significant way of developing, maintaining, and strengthening our social connections, both online and in person. Using social networking services builds social capital in a number of ways: greater emotional support, lower levels of loneliness, and more feelings of connectedness. But these studies also contain a note of caution: Too many followers and too much participation can lead to information overload, depression, and feelings of disconnectedness.

The bottom line? I’m going to keep my iPhone and my Facebook account—but I think I’ll also keep setting limits.

About the Author

Lauren klein.

Lauren Klein is a Greater Good editorial assistant.

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Technophrenia

On the interface between technology, people and society

How technology is changing language and the way we think about the world

Director of UWA Centre for Software Practice, The University of Western Australia

University of Western Australia provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

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We are getting used to the idea of rapidly developing technologies changing what we can do and how we do things. What most people haven’t considered is how technologies affect our language and how these changes are affecting the way we speak and even the way we think.

One of the key ways we see this is when the name of a company becomes a way of doing something involving any product that is similar. Classic examples are “to hoover” which came from the early dominance of vaccuum cleaners from the Hoover Company .

Googling becomes a verb

More significantly is the use of the term “to google” which first came to prominence in 2002 when the American Dialect Society declared it word of the year. Later, in 2009, they declared “google” to be the the word of the decade.

Google had become a generic word meaning “to search the Internet” with any search engine, not just Google itself. But googling has become much more than just the mere act of typing words into a text box and clicking a button. We now understand the subtext when someone declares “I have googled you” or even that they have googled themselves. The idea that this act can now exert a powerful effect on the opinion we form of others has even resulted in laws formulated by the European Union giving individuals rights over search engine companies to have information about them removed in order to be “forgotten”.

Google has now become our collective global memory and googling is the process by which we access those memories. This, in turn, is simply a process that we have always engaged with called “ transactive memory ” in which we turn to people around us, usually people we know, to help us recall facts and memories. The invention of the Gutenberg press allowed us to outsource people to books. The difference now though is that Google is now always with us, has a vast database of information that it is getting increasingly better at letting you access, with the vaguest of questions. This in turn has had a dramatic effect on what we are able to achieve, not only as individuals, but as a society.

The act of computer programming for example has become much easier through the ability to learn new computer languages and solve problems by “googling” the answers. It could be argued that the boom in mobile phone apps would not have been possible without Ggoogle providing a mechanism to access the “transactive memories” of the thousands of knowledgeable programmers with the answers to any developer’s questions.

Interestingly, it has been [Google] themselves who have resisted , even at times through legal threats, the spread of “google” being used beyond its reference to the company. This is because if it does enter the language as a common term, Google could lose the protection of the name as a trademark. If Google becomes a common term, to mean any generic search, it could become a “generic trademark” like Cellophane, Aspirin, Escalator and others.

Industries become uberized

In a different example of a verb that has come from a proper noun but may have just as significant an impact on our social lives, we have “to uberize”. This comes from the company Uber whose business approach has disrupted an industry by using mobile apps backed with data analytics to provide cheaper taxi services to consumers. The concept of “uberization” has taken the general meaning of disrupting any industry through the use of technology to circumvent unnecessary bureaucracy and legislation. What is interesting about the use of the term uberization is that again, the subtext is not just about the actual process of transforming an industry into something more efficient or productive. Saying that an industry needs to be “uberized” is as much a commentary about its unwillingness to change, modernise and really meet consumers’ needs. This context is being built up with every new development in the ongoing battles and controversies that Uber is facing as it pushes through its disruption of the taxi industry.

Uber’s less successful contribution to our language has been the concept of “ surge pricing ”. The concept embodies basic economic principles to ensure that there are taxis willing to pick up consumers at the busiest times. It turns out that this is too hard for most consumers (and reporters) to understand and they have interpreted it simply as unfair price gouging.

As a new term, it is an interesting example however of how a term that was supposed to have a specific meaning has been turned into something completely different through popular usage.

How much has changed

There are many conversations that we could have today that would mean little to someone from 2005. Even though the definition of specific words could be given, it would need the entire context of how they have developed through the interplay of technology, individuals and society to have any real meaning. This is not the first time this has happened in history but certainly the increase in the pace of change has resulted in our language changing equally rapidly, and with it, our thoughts.

On a final historical note, you can wonder what George Bernard Shaw would have understood by the following statements? “My mother was hacked last night.” “What a great meal - I’ll upload it!” “If anyone’s out there, can you inbox me?’ "How many steps did you get today?” “Will you torrent me the next series?” “I’ve given up on windows.”

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In photos: men’s basketball: gauchos vs uc davis, art as a weapon against invasion – film reminds us of…, opportunity for all uc office of the president yet to make…, the top boba places in isla vista – a journey into…, getting kozy: isla vista’s newest coffee shop, a call for natural sustainability: the story and mission of the…, tasa night market 2023: fostering community and featuring budding clubs at…, in photos – daedalum luminarium, an art installation, creating characters we love: the screenwriting process in our flag means…, indigo de souza and the best-case anticlimax, a spectrum of songs: ucsb’s college of creative studies set to…, nature in i.v. – black mold, southern california is in super bloom, from love to likes: social media’s role in relationships, the gloom continues: a gray may, the rise of ai girlfriends: connecting with desires and discussing controversy,…, letter to the editor: dining hall laborers have had enough, do…, is studying abroad worth it for a ucsb student, workers at ucsb spotlight: being a writing tutor for clas, technology is destroying the quality of human interaction.

Melissa Nilles Arts & Entertainment Editor

Photo by Andrea Rodriguez

I had a terrible nightmare the other night. Instead of meeting for a quick cup of coffee, my friend and I spent 30 minutes texting back and forth about our day. After that, instead of going in to talk to my professor during his office hours, I emailed him from home with my question. Because of this, he never got to know who I was, even though he would have been a great source for a letter of recommendation if he had. I ignored a cute guy at the bus stop asking me the time because I was busy responding to a text. And I spent far too much time on Facebook trying to catch up with my 1000+ “friends,” most of whom I rarely see, and whose meaning sadly seems to dispel even more as the sheer number of “connections” I’ve made grows.

Oh wait, that wasn’t a dream. This technological detachment is becoming today’s reality.

Little by little, Internet and mobile technology seems to be subtly destroying the meaningfulness of interactions we have with others, disconnecting us from the world around us, and leading to an imminent sense of isolation in today’s society. Instead of spending time in person with friends, we just call, text or instant message them. It may seem simpler, but we ultimately end up seeing our friends face to face a lot less. Ten texts can’t even begin to equal an hour spent chatting with a friend over lunch. And a smiley-face emoticon is cute, but it could never replace the ear-splitting grin and smiling eyes of one of your best friends. Face time is important, people. We need to see each other.

This doesn’t just apply to our friends; it applies to the world around us. It should come as no surprise that face-to-face interaction is proven by studies to comfort us and provide us with some important sense of well-being, whether it’s with friends or friendly cashiers in the checkout line of Albertson’s. That’s actually the motivation behind Albertson’s decision last year to take all of the self-checkout lanes out of its stores: an eerie lack of human contact.

There’s something intangibly real and valuable about talking with someone face to face. This is significant for friends, partners, potential employers, and other recurring people that make up your everyday world. That person becomes an important existing human connection, not just someone whose disembodied text voice pops up on your cell phone, iPad or computer screen.

It seems we have more extended connections than ever in this digital world, which can be great for networking, if it’s used right. The sad fact of the matter is that most of us don’t. It’s too hard to keep up with 1000 friends, let alone 200. At that point, do we even remember their names? We need to start prizing the meaning of quality in our connections, not sheer quantity.

One of my best friends from my hometown has 2,241 Facebook friends. Sure, her posts get a ton of feedback, but when I asked her about the quality of those relationships, she said to me that she really has few friends that she can trust and spend time with happily. Using a strange conundrum like this as a constructive example, we should consider pruning our rampant online connections at the very least.

Past evolutionary psychology research by British anthropologist and psychologist Robin Dunbar has revealed that people are actually limited to a certain number of stable, supportive connections with others in their social network: roughly 150. Furthermore, recent follow-up research by Cornell University’s Bruno Goncalves used Twitter data to show that despite the current ability to connect with vast amounts of people via the Internet, a person can still only truly maintain a friendship with a maximum of 100 to 200 real friends in their social network.

49 COMMENTS

I have battled with the same problems. I think the internet has provided an excellent medium to be able meet new people by simply smashing strangers together and getting them to talk. But why we can’t extend this to face to face conversations is beyond me. There is an interesting solution proposed in the following website to exercise more spontaneous face to face conversation.

http://www.ProjectOrigamiSwan.com

Observe the irony of using online interaction to avoid it…

EXACTLY. people need to stand up and start realizing the truth. All this destruction against one another isnt guna do any good. The world and its people has flipped completley, from hard workers and strugglers to lazy people. People have learned to give up so quickly because their handed everything. They dont know what its like to suffer. And maybe thats what this country needs. Its an extreme that people need to recongnize, but without people fighting it, itll just fall down right into a big dump pile.

I understand fully what this articles purpose is, but I believe that instead of stating the obvious, it could provide more ways to conquer this problem and once again return to human contact. Ideas on how people can avoid the technology would benefit this article. It is also ironic that an article about human interaction being destroyed by technology is on the internet, the main source of all technology.

i think technololgy absolutley is ruinng the quality of human life. its funny that this is online tho. anyways tho i dont use hardly any technology and try to stay away from it as much as possible becuase i like to tlak to poeple face to face, and it really bothers me when ur with someone and theyre calling anohter friend or texting someone or they invite u over thier house and then u end up watching tv for the whole time! i think thats incredibley rude, so i try to be very social to people, and i never ignore someone by texting or and i stay away from all this facebook crap too! its a total waste of time. i used to spend hours on there. and u kno what, i have way more real frineds, now that i deleted my facebook and have way more fun actually hanging out in person with poeple. and anyway look at the guy who made facebook! one of the wierdest guys ever. he probl;y has np frindes! u wanna b like that guy! pleeze. get off ur dumb cell phone get of the couch in front of the tv, and go have fun with real people!!

your ALL abunch of butt sniffers!!!

your bitch ass can’t fucking spell apparently

Melissa, you hit the nail on the head. I just turned 50. I’ve been amazed at how my friendships over the past 10-15 years have dwindled to nothing more than FB posts and an occasional email or text. People seem to be more interested in returning a text than returning a phone call much less actually going by and seeing the person. While I think social media has some really interesting aspects its totally replaced true social relationships. I took my daughters to see WALL-E when it came out in 2008. Very cute and sweet movie. But it also showed humans had become so lazy they just rode around in recliners while communicating with others view a keyboard and monitor. We have fallen into this trap of believing we have to be accesible 24×7 through a device rather than a doorbell button…or sitting on the front porch talking….or just walking around the neighborhood talking to people face to face.

Although technology has helped in so many ways, there is no doubt that human interaction, morality, socializing, and standards have changed for the worse. Different doesn’t always mean good. Faster and more efficient ways of communicating doesn’t mean good.

Facebook is a huge problem, as it is a virtual high school where people create shrines. Twitter promotes ADD and poor grammar.

I agree with all the points made in this article, (and most of the points afterwards) but I would argue the key problem is what I’m doing right now… writing on my mobile phone. This very limiting, slow, mistake provoking form of typing has caused people to become attracted to extremely superficial and ‘group’ chat systems such as twitter. Because you can write on a bus, in a bed, or wherever really you need to summarize your thoughts into a very basic form, avoid saying anything too developed or imaginative, avoid learning how to type with anything but your thumbs. I was interested in online chatting back in 2001 on IRC but became quote bored with the concept of group chatting, including very basic thoughts. Who are dominating properly written email these days? Advertisers.

Because people want the validation of others. They want it constantly hence Facebook or what I call loser book.

Low self esteem needs the constant validation of Facebook photos posts. Who cares if you ate ham for lunch? Oh gee that got 9 likes on Facebook. That must mean these people like me or i am good or popular.. NO it just means your an addict with an ego that needs validation all the time. Nothing will ever replace having a meal with your family and talking about the day.

Texting is good for sales but not much else why can’t you pick up the phone and ask the same 10 questions you did spending 20 minutes texting?

What a waste of time. Really you don’t want to talk to the person your texting. Your just bored for that particular moment.

I agree 100% on every single point mentioned in this article. this is great stuff. I’m a junior in high school and i’m writing my junior research paper on this exact topic!

I believe in my article http://axewielderx.wordpress.com/2013/11/05/farewell-facebook/ I found the real root to the problem. It began with the like button. Now every frickin’ site on the planet has them and there is no reason to communicate or interact with any one. Frankly, I am rather amazed anyone gets comments anywhere. I have come to realize that a comment or real communication from another human being is simply never going to happen again for me. Yes, it does indeed look like a rather lonely future awaits not just me, but everyone if the trend continues.

Exactly. I have two daughters who barely talk anymore. I take them out for a birthday meal and they sit messaging their friends. People in the works canteen don’t talk anymore..some of them take breaks alone so they can be left alone to game and to surf. Everywhere I go there are phones beeping ‘ people shoving phones in peoples faces and basially not interacting. I’m not anti technology but to me my phone is a tool and when its done its job I put it away.

can people today even demonstrate half of an example of what enjoyment and optimism is? the social network is completely abolishing all thought and life from those who are using. yes, we’re all hypocrites. today, people bow their heads as they walk down the sidewalk, and bury their heads deeply into other people’s business. if that’s not depressing enough, people use less brain power day to day. in essence, destroying modestly an hour to three hours of thought process each day. it all adds up, as well as the urge to google solutions rather than critically think them through. is their any appreciation? is their any soul left? they’d rather be secluded from a world full of opportunities and love and transferred into a virtual world of “entertainment” that their narrow minds have been pushed and subjected to. in the business world, technology, social media, and so forth is ideal… defeating any potential for people as a whole to realize their own demolition. well done, system. you’ve handed us the bone, and we’re licking it clean… as if what’s given to us is always good.

Thanks for writing this. I’m rethinking a lot of things about technology, too. I do find the kids faces, rather than being lit up with smiles, are being lit up by phone/tablet/computer screens. I’m trying to put my phone away more and am re-thinking my use of Facebook Thank you for the great article.

destruction is within the eye (and mind) of the beholder ….. the quality of human interaction is sometimes aided by tech …. learn to accentuate the positive force and rely on the Truth …

There’s a video on youtube called “Inkuire: The Human Social Network Brand” that proposes a solution to our lack of face to face interaction in public. If any of you all see this, send me a reply about whether you think this can truly have an effect on our social trend and your thoughts in general about the movement.

I fail to see why face to face contact is better. Maybe I’d rather talk to someone else who isn’t present. Most of the people I’m forced to socialize with on a daily basis are boring and have little to say that has value to me. Sorry, harsh but true. I’d rather relax on my phone than talk about the weather for the billionth time, If not for Facebook, I’d have lost contact with 100s of people over the years. Technology, particularly social media makes me feel more connected with the rest of the world. Sorry Luddites, but face to face interaction is overrated and unnecessary.

@ Rock… You’re an @$$hole… You know that, right?

This just goes to show; Choose wisely what you do with your electronic device(s) & the amount of time you spend using them.

hi..Im college student, thanks for sharing 🙂

I think we’ve already lost this war.There might be hope if and when that dreaded rumor of a cancer due to cell use actually text’s it’s ugly head and people become afflicted.Until then we should be working on a 12 text(step) program.Ultimately though it is up to us.We do have a choice.For the time being all we can do is watch the statistics and see how many more people will just become Quasi Dead Geriatric Zombies!

Human interaction already sucked anyway.

this all is absolutely right. we r just facing a backwardness in our relationships…. im going to debate on the current topic simmilar to it. im totally agree to ur article……………………….keep writing on such great topics

This article is typical student-level claptrap, focusing on the surface level and ignoring the positive aspects. You get a C-, kid.

Great article what technology is doing to destroy our human interaction. But the technology isn ‘t only one to blame it’s us as well. We’re accountable for our action. We need to discipline ourself and use less technology and use more human interaction, they it use to be about 14- 20 years ago. This younger, generations probably thinks how boring or ancient. Studies show it’s the best way for our mental well being.

Great article, even if it just identifies the problem, that’s where great study should start. And we are far behind in this problem. It’s really shaping how families communicate…or miscommunicate. Which will reshape how those crucial relationships grow. Me and Mark Zuckerberg were born on the same day. That being said, I consider myself someone who is culturally diverse and can mesh with several groups, ages and background. But I was kinda raised a loner. When I watched the Social Network(Facebook movie) I saw a lonely guy. And this lonely guy found away to bring all these people together, in a real, yet really superficial way. Who else but him to put those pieces together. Whatever the remedies to this, it a going to start really really small and people are going to have to see the benefit of real intentional interaction, before no one remembers what that is.

Please send me on email speech on technology has ruined human relationship

so the technology was very beautiful

hellow in girl i read in class 6 girls my school name is the educator

fuck of gabe,ust becuase you are a fucking grumpy old fucking man, doesn’t mean you have to fucking rain on everyone’s fucking parade. ><

Fuck You Idiots you no nothing about Computers and when you finally learn that Computers have changed for the better and maybe you will think differently

I think technology is a helpful way to find out information or quick research, but it has had a huge impact on relationships.

what are strategies the author uses to convey her message

There’s no real irony & there’s no need for abusing others’ opinions; like everything in life, it’s all about balance. Use the wondrous things technology allows us to do without sacrificing the personal touch of human interaction …

Social media is something poor youths hold dear, they are engrossed and absorbed although some young people may endeavor to avoid such a compulsion, unfortunately social media will remain a treasure in many peoples blind lives.

Great write up. Technology has really touched human life in differet ways.. I believe modran technology doesn’t make us less social, but defiently it changes the way we socialize. 🙂

I think you are totally right, and I commend you for saying what we are all thinking and pondering. I am doing an essay for class and you really helped me as evidence that proves what I was stating. 🙂 😉 🙂 😉 🙂 😉

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I love how this is all on a laptop. lol

Computers users are turning into the contemporary equivalent of old-fashioned hermits. Well-spoken, opinionated, perfectly groomed in online contact… But they never want to leave their dwelling…

https://stonewings.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/hermit-cave-01.jpg

Sending letters is a better communication technique, isn’t it? It takes ages for the recepient to reply but it’s soooooo wonderful!11!!1!!!!

i think the internet just bring what is really inside you. if you are superficial internet is your place

This SUX the Internet is awesome just look at stuff like Clash Royale for example. I spent about a thousand dollars on it, it is BEST GAME EVER BOI

Exactly. This is just sad. Spending +$1000 on a game? Just…wow.

@Unknown Human. I agree. Joe, I can’t believe you spend that much money-or any amount of money at all on games. They’re entertainment, not your life.

Great article, it really makes you think about our society today :/

y’all gay motherfucker

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Is Tech Destroying Kids’ Social Skills? Here’s How Social-Emotional Learning Can Help

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Technology’s effect on children’s social skills and well-being has caused a lot of hand-wringing over the years—and parents’ and educators’ concerns have only grown with the pandemic as students have done more socializing and learning on their digital devices.

Social media, virtual learning, online gaming, and ubiquitous devices present new social challenges for kids. So, what social-emotional skills do they need to flourish in an increasingly tech-centric world, and are schools teaching them?

Many schools are teaching key skills such as empathy, perspective-taking, and self-management, said Kelly Mendoza, the vice president of education programs at Common Sense Media, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that also provides curricula and ratings on media and technology. However, the wrinkle is that educators are not always explicitly connecting those skills with tech use.

One reason could be that a lot of SEL curricula uses face-to-face examples in instructional materials and in exercises, said Mendoza.

“And I wonder if there is a generation gap and the adults teaching these skills don’t think of all of the challenges that kids face online or are even aware of them,” she said. “I’m sure they could make the SEL connections, but [these connections] may not be top of mind because adults are not participating online as much.”

But that disconnect, said Mendoza, means that students may not apply or adapt these all-critical social-emotional skills they are learning in school to their digital lives.

Their digital lives, too, are fused with their offline lives in a way that is foreign to many adults, said Michael Rich, a pediatrician and the director of the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital.

“This generation of young people live in an environment where they move seamlessly from the digital and physical world,” he said. Their teachers and parents, however, often see two worlds: one digital and one real.

How technology influences kids’ social-emotional development

It’s in this hybrid digital and analog world that kids are developing their identities, building relationships, learning to regulate their emotions and actions, and navigating an onslaught of false information. They are also spending a lot more time in the digital realm than they were before the pandemic, a recent survey by Common Sense Media found .

Kids are constantly performing for others on social media, and their identity development is highly subjected to others' feedback.

While the social-emotional skills students need to do well in school and the workplace are many of the same they need to be good digital citizens, technology presents new challenges.

Students need to be self-aware and able to manage their emotions, said Melissa Schlinger, the vice president of practice and programs at the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, or CASEL. There is a lot of emotional content on social media that goads kids (and adults) to click first and think later—commenting or sharing a video, meme, or story without evaluating its accuracy or the repercussions of their actions.

“One component of SEL is to make sure that we are slowing down, and managing those impulses, and understanding what we’re reading,” she said. “Is this something to share? Is it helpful? And that self-management piece is a key strength that we need in this digital space.”

Teachers also need to coach kids to actively pay attention to how they are using media and technology and how it makes them feel, said Mendoza. Do they feel energized or lonely after playing video games? Do they feel confident or bad about themselves after scrolling through social media? Did they miss sleep, or a chance to interact with friends or family in person because of technology?

Maintaining supportive relationships and developing healthy identities can also be more challenging online. People often behave differently when interacting with screens instead of face-to-face, which can lead to cyberbullying and can carry over into in-person interactions.

“What we want to do is bring the personal piece back so that we can tap into our empathy,” said Schlinger. “So, remembering that there are people on the other side of this exchange and trying to focus on being empathic and imagining how different perspectives are reacting and different consequences are affecting different people.”

Building that capacity for empathy in the digital space is important for maintaining healthy relationships online, she said.

Social-emotional learning as it relates to tech shouldn’t focus on just the short-term consequences of hurt feelings or sharing disinformation. Another important skill for students: being able to game out the long-term consequences of actions and how what they say or share online today could derail a job application or scholarship award down the line or destroy a relationship.

This is true, also, for younger children as more of them join social media.

“Young children’s executive function is not developed enough to understand privacy,” said Rich, the pediatrician. “To them, privacy is mom and dad can’t see it. They don’t think about the rest of the world.”

Much of SEL focuses on identity development, said Mendoza, and how students develop healthy identities online should be a part of that exploration in the classroom.

“Kids are constantly performing for others on social media, and their identity development is highly subjected to others’ feedback,” said Mendoza. “Then there is a social comparison, that’s huge, where you’re scrolling and looking and everything is perfect or airbrushed, and kids struggle with this social comparison all of the time.”

While social media is certainly a dominant technology in children’s lives, it’s not the only one creating challenges for kids, families, and educators. There’s online gaming and also a rise in tech use for schoolwork. Families can struggle with the ubiquitous use of digital devices, said Mendoza.

“What I heard from some parents is that they felt like the school is sending this device home, and they felt like, well, it’s not my device, so they felt like they almost had less authority over it,” she said. “I think there is a struggle, and I don’t know what the solution is, around having kids do homework, which is all online nowadays, and then so much of their time is on screens already for their personal use, and it’s just a heck of a lot of screen time.”

There are a few broad ways schools can start being more conscious about teaching social-emotional skills for tech use.

To begin with, “schools can deliberately carve out time for these lessons around explicit skill building around SEL and digital citizenship,” said Nick Woolf, the social and emotional learning coordinator for the Burlington School District in Vermont.

However, as schools do this, educators should be aware that there has been rapid growth of online and app-based social-emotional learning programs during the pandemic, warned Woolf, many of which are not vetted. It’s important for educators to make sure they are using programs that are evidence-based and age-appropriate, he said.

As with much SEL programming, secondary students —especially high schoolers—tend to be an afterthought, said Woolf, and it can be hard to find good curricula and resources geared to older students. This is particularly problematic given that this age group needs these supports the most as they navigate technology.

One way to address this, said Woolf, is to consult high school students on their social-emotional learning needs as it relates to tech. As digital natives, they have a better grasp on their needs than the adults often do, he said.

Schools should also seek student input on tech policies in their school—such as around smartphone use—as a way both to craft more-meaningful policies and to get students involved in the process, Woolf recommends. Student voice, or giving students avenues to have a say in how their school is run, is a tenet of SEL.

Easing the tension between technology and social-emotional development

For a long time, technology and social-emotional learning were thought of as distinct things, sometimes even at odds with one another because technology was seen as undermining students’ social skills.

But the pandemic has forced schools to think about delivering social-emotional learning and other well-being supports in new ways, said Woolf. And while social-emotional learning can help support healthy tech use, the reverse is also true, if often overlooked: tech can also support SEL.

There are app-based check-in tools—such as mood meters—where students tap an emoji that depicts their current mood and, depending upon what they select, link to a related mindfulness activity. This is less work for teachers than the traditional paper mood meters, said Woolf, and it makes it far easier for the district to collect and see trends across the data.

Data management programs with dashboards also make it easier for schools to collect and analyze data important to understanding the social-emotional needs and abilities of students, said Schlinger of CASEL. Survey data on whether students feel engaged, connected, or safe in school can be easily broken down by gender, age, race, income status, and other factors.

As with a lot of other technology products and services, these advancements bring with them significant privacy concerns.

“I have heard from a lot of parents and teachers, if we’re going to ask students about how they are feeling, that could be bringing up sensitive information,” Woolf said.

Technology can help educators in other ways, said Schlinger. Zoom and other video conference tools have made it easier for teachers to meet with parents, building up those all-crucial relationships, said Schlinger and they have made PD opportunities—including those to improve SEL—more accessible to teachers.

While technology has created new challenges for kids’ social-emotional development—and for educators teaching these skills—it’s not helpful to think of the two as distinct or in tension with one another, said Schlinger.

“Technology is not going away so we need to provide our young people with these skills,” she said.

Data analysis for this article was provided by the EdWeek Research Center. Learn more about the center’s work.

A version of this article appeared in the April 13, 2022 edition of Education Week as Is Tech Destroying Kids’ Social Skills? Here’s How Social-Emotional Learning Can Help

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Has Technology Ruined Our Ability To Communicate?

On track for medical school in 2006, Natalie Bencivenga was deterred when she met Joe Vienis

"I would love to go out with you."

"Great, I'll text you."

Oh, the three words I dread hearing -- "I'll text you."

Sure, it is a wonderful thing to be asked out on a date. But, how unromantic is it to get a text two days later that reads:

"What r u up 2?

Wana grab dinr/drinks?

Yuck. If this is the state of communicating with a potential lover in the modern world, thanks, but I'll pass. What has happened to us? Are we all really so busy that the act of picking up a phone is just too taxing, too daunting? Don't think I am above it! I text so much my thumbs are going to fall off. It just dawned on me, however, that maybe this isn't the best way to go about building long and lasting relationships. I mean, really, can any relationship be sustained with "u busy 2nite?" I don't think so.

Texting as a form of regular communication is dangerous, because how well can one communicate via text? Sure, it's quicker than calling but because of sacrificing time for convenience, we miss the flow of conversation. The subtle nuances, the change in tone, the banter, the chase. Everything has been reduced to 130 characters, and frankly, I'm a little worried about the effect that it is having on the state of our collective consciousness. Ok, I'm really worried.

Does this lack of intimacy and connection make us colder, more detached to one another? Even with as many people as there are on this planet, it seems as if we are more alone and isolated than ever before.

Yes, people can connect with each other in a million different ways, whether texting, skyping, Facebook -ing, or tweeting to name only a few, but there seems to be less personal connections between people. Do you really know most of the people you friend on Facebook? Who would really come help change your tire if you broke down at two in the morning from that long list of internet friends? Two, maybe three at most?

And this "quantity over quality" message which is part of our consumerist mentality is spilling over into how we look at relationships. There is no depth to any of it! I know plenty of people that have been dumped via text message, and even some that found out they were no longer in relationships when they checked their soon-to-be ex's Facebook status and it went from "in a relationship" to "single" right before their very eyes.

Because of these "easy ways out" we have forgotten what it's like to confront our issues. It's safer, more anonymous, and less stressful to just text someone when making plans or to break plans. We feel such a disconnect from one another with our cold little weapons in hand, that the sting doesn't seem to hurt as bad receiving or sending out those types of messages. It's easier to break up via email than it is to look anyone in the eye and tell them it just isn't working any more.

Confrontation is scary. Emotional confrontation is even scarier. There is nothing to hide behind, nowhere to run. Putting it all out there makes one vulnerable and sometimes it is easier to use these electronic devices as a crutch.

But, what happens when that crutch cripples you? When you don't know how to walk alone, without it? I experimented the other night by leaving my blackberry at my apartment FOR A WHOLE NIGHT and being free of my technological crutch and let me tell you, I panicked!

At first, I was scared that I was missing very important updates (which, of course, I wasn't). I was then freaking out that perhaps someone was trying to get a hold of me and couldn't (when, of course, no one was). It dawned on me when I did gather my phone later, how ridiculous I had become. This sense of self-importance was clouding my vision as to what was really important. Quality human interaction.

So, I challenge all of you tech-junkies (myself included) to start acknowledging that while it is convenient to text instead of call, Facebook instead of meet for coffee; being a part of society means interacting face-to-face, getting your hands dirty and forming genuine connections with the people around you. Only when we are vulnerable and let people into our hearts and minds can we really understand what our purpose as human beings truly is: to love and be loved. And, let's be honest. You cannot fully realize the strength of that emotion through the click-clack of keys.

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Is technology really ruining your life?