Digital Interaction: Blessing or Curse?
In this new digital age, we have many new ways to communicate with each other. Facebook, twitter, email, chat, phones, SMS messaging, etc. have blessed us with many ways to get people’s attention. But they’ve also cursed us with many ways to have our attention interrupted. This hurts us socially in the real world.
Digital communication has a bad habit of shortening our attention spans while also making it easy to forget that the person you’re talking to at the other end has feelings. Computers lack emotion, but humans are responsive to disrespect and annoying behavior.
Nowadays when I’m mid-chat with a person and they suddenly log off or vanish, I don’t get upset at all –I learned that it was a normal part of digital communication (sadly). In most cases the person just got sidetracked or the computer crashed. Doesn’t matter. But in general, I don’t think it’s good practice to just leave a conversation (real-world or digital) without offering a clear ending to the interaction (i.e. “goodbye”). I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been talking to a person on Google chat or FB chat or any chat where they suddenly become unresponsive even after a period of high responsiveness. This is frustrating because it forces me to either wait or just leave the conversation completely. In the real world, it would be incredibly awkward to talk to a person a lot and then all the sudden stop talking for 15 minutes. We forget this facet of social interaction in the digital realm.
Computers also allow us to talk to more than one person at the same time. This divides our attention so instead of giving each person our whole mind, we give them 1/3 or 1/5 or whatever. Multitasking is great, but when it comes to talking to people on a personal level, I think it’s important to focus in on that. When I talk to people via google chat or phone I try to focus in on that single conversation. Would you appreciate it if your friends only listened to you with half attention? If not, then why do it to other people?
Example of how computers have affected our real world behaviors: We often pick up our cell phones while in the middle of conversation with real world people (or worse, we’ll text other people even while mid-conversation with a person). “Hold on, I have a call,” we’ll say as we answer the phone. I know people do not mean rudeness by this, so I do not mind, but sometimes I think, “C’mon, we were talking about something interesting and this interruption is kinda wasting my own time.” If you think about it, it’s not considerate to the person you’re talking to if you just freeze out of the current interaction and handle some business on the phone. You’re basically putting that person on “pause.” Watch how people act when one person in the interaction answers a phone and freezes out temporarily. Sometimes it’s awkward.*
When I get calls while in the middle of a real conversation or interaction or date or whatever, I usually double click the “send to voicemail” button on my phone. Whether I’m talking to a friend, professor, or cute girl –voicemail it is (I don’t even check the caller ID). Nothing is so urgent (unless I’m expecting an urgent call) that it can’t wait an hour. Besides, the person at the other end of the call knows that sometimes people can’t answer their phones so it’s not like you’re offending him or her by not picking up. As long as you respond to voicemail within a reasonable time (i.e. within the day) you’ll be fine.
Phones (voice and text), gchat, facebook, gchat + voice and/or video, etc. are nice quick ways to grab someone’s attention, but I dislike using them too much. One can certainly learn techniques to connect with people over the phone and internet, but NOTHING compares to real life interaction. In fact, digital communication may actually be doing more harm to social interaction than good.
Here’s some interesting reading:
NPR article on teens and texting
A funny article about cell phones, published by the Florida State University’s student newspaper.
New Yorker article about Facebook and social skills.
*There are ways to exploit the interaction vacuum created by answering a phone, but that’s a topic for another post 
Tags: cell phone, digital communication, facebook, Social Skills
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