technology is ruining our ability to communicate essay

Impact of Technology on Communication Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

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.

• Visualization for Thinking, Planning, and Problem Solving
• History of Communication Technology
• LG Mobile Teen Texting Campaign
• Texting While Driving Should Be Illegal
• Tougher Punishment for Texting While Driving
• Electronic Communication
• The Role of Communication in Society
• Public Relations and Ethical Decisions
• Social Network Communication
• Modern Day Communication
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2019, March 28). Impact of Technology on Communication Essay. https://ivypanda.com/essays/impact-of-technology-on-communication/

"Impact of Technology on Communication Essay." IvyPanda , 28 Mar. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/impact-of-technology-on-communication/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Impact of Technology on Communication Essay'. 28 March.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Impact of Technology on Communication Essay." March 28, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/impact-of-technology-on-communication/.

1. IvyPanda . "Impact of Technology on Communication Essay." March 28, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/impact-of-technology-on-communication/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Impact of Technology on Communication Essay." March 28, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/impact-of-technology-on-communication/.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Front Psychol

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.

• Aslam S. (2020a). Facebook by the Numbers (2020): Stats, Demographics & Fun Facts. Available online at: https://www.omnicoreagency.com/facebook-statistics/ (accessed September 28, 2020) [ Google Scholar ]
• Aslam S. (2020b). Snapchat by the Numbers (2020): Stats, Demographics & Fun Facts. Available online at: https://www.omnicoreagency.com/snapchat-statistics/ (accessed September 28, 2020) [ Google Scholar ]
• Blanch-Hartigan D., Andrzejewski S. A., Hill K. M. (2012). The effectiveness of training to improve person perception accuracy: a meta-analysis. Basic Appl. Soc. Psychol. 34 483–498. 10.1080/01973533.2012.728122 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Culnan M. J., Markus M. L. (1987). “ Information technologies ,” in Handbook of organizational Communication: an Interdisciplinary Perspective , eds Jablin F. M., Putnam L. L., Roberts K. H., Porter L. W. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc; ), 420–443. [ Google Scholar ]
• Dael N., Schlegel K., Ruben M. A., Schmid Mast M. The Workplace Interpersonal Perception Skill (WIPS) test: Validation of a Performance Measure of Broad Interpersonal Accuracy. (in prep) [ Google Scholar ]
• Döring N., Pöschl S. (2008). “ Nonverbal cues in mobile phone text messages: the effects of chronemics and proxemics ,” in the Reconstruction of Space and Time: Mobile Communication Practices. eds Ling R., Campbell S. W. (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers; ), 109–136. 10.4324/9781315134499-6 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ellison N. B., Steinfield C., Lampe C. (2007). The benefits of Facebook “friends:” social capital and college students’ use of online social network sites. J. Comput. Mediat. Commun. 12 1143–1168. 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00367.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Faul F., Erdfelder E., Lang A. G., Buchner A. (2007). G ∗ power 3: a flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behav. Res. Methods 39 175–191. 10.3758/bf03193146 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ferrán-Urdaneta C., Storck J. (1997). “ Truth or deception: the impact of videoconferencing for job interviews ,” in Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 97) , (Atlanta, GA: ). [ Google Scholar ]
• Goh J. X., Hall J. A., Rosenthal R. (2016). Mini meta-analysis of your own studies: some arguments on why and a primer on how. Soc. Pers. Psychol. Compass 10 535–549. 10.1111/spc3.12267 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hall J. A., Gunnery S. D. (2013). “ Gender differences in nonverbal communication ,” in Handbooks of Communication Science. Nonverbal Communication , eds Hall J. A., Knapp M. L. (Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton; ), 639–669. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hall J. A., Andrzejewski S. A., Yopchick J. E. (2009). Psychosocial correlates of interpersonal sensitivity: a meta-analysis. J. Nonverbal Behav. 33 149–180. 10.1007/s10919-009-0070-5 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hu Y., Wood J. F., Smith V., Westbrook N. (2004). Friendships through IM: examining the relationship between instant messaging and intimacy. J. Comput. Mediat. Commun. 10 38–48. [ Google Scholar ]
• Jackson L. A., Zhao Y., Kolenic A., III., Fitzgerald H. E., Harold R., Von Eye A. (2008). Race, gender, and information technology use: the new digital divide. Cyber Psychol. Behav. 11 437–442. 10.1089/cpb.2007.0157 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kiesler S., Siegel J., McGuire T. W. (1984). Social psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication. Am. Psychol. 39 1123–1134. 10.1037/0003-066x.39.10.1123 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kraut R., Patterson M., Lundmark V., Kiesler S., Mukopadhyay T., Scherlis W. (1998). Internet paradox: a social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being? Am. Psychol. 53 1017–1031. 10.1037/0003-066x.53.9.1017 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Neureiter K., Fuchsberger V., Murer M., Tscheligi M. (2013). “ Hands and eyes: how eye contact is linked to gestures in video conferencing ,” in Proceedings of the CHI ‘13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems , eds Mackay W. E., Brewster S. A., Bødker S. (New York, NY: Association for Computing Machinery; ), 127–132. [ Google Scholar ]
• Nie N. H. (2001). Sociability, interpersonal relations and the internet: reconciling conflicting findings. Am. Behav. Sci. 45 420–435. 10.1177/00027640121957277 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Nowicki S., Duke M. P. (1994). Individual differences in the nonverbal communication of affect: the diagnostic analysis of nonverbal accuracy scale. J. Nonverbal Behav. 18 9–35. 10.1007/bf02169077 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Patterson M. L. (2019). A systems model of dyadic nonverbal interaction. J. Nonverbal Behav. 43 111–132. 10.1007/s10919-018-00292-w [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Pew Research Center. (2019). Mobile Fact Sheet. Available online at: www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/ (accessed November 15, 2020) [ Google Scholar ]
• Riggio R. E. (2005). “ The social skills inventory (SSI): measuring nonverbal and social skills ,” in the Sourcebook of Nonverbal Measures Going Beyond Words , ed Manusov V. L. New Jersey, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, 25–33. [ Google Scholar ]
• Sayce D. (2020). The Number of Tweets Per Day in 2020. Available online at: https://www.dsayce.com/social-media/tweets-day/ (accessed September 28, 2020) [ Google Scholar ]
• Schlegel K., Boone R. T., Hall J. A. (2017a). Individual differences in interpersonal accuracy: a multi-level meta-analysis to assess whether judging other people is one skill or many. J. Nonverbal Behav. 41 103–137. 10.1007/s10919-017-0249-0 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Schlegel K., Vicaria I. M., Isaacowitz D. M., Hall J. A. (2017b). Effectiveness of a short audiovisual emotion recognition training program in adults. Motiv. Emot. 41 646–660. 10.1007/s11031-017-9631-9 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Siegel J., Dubrovsky V., Kiesler S., McGuire T. W. (1986). Group processes in computer-mediated communication. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 37 157–187. 10.1016/0749-5978(86)90050-6 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sproull L., Kiesler S. (1986). Reducing social context cues: electronic mail in organizational communication. Management Science 32, 1492–1512. 10.1287/mnsc.32.11.1492 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Stritzke W. G., Nguyen A., Durkin K. (2004). Shyness and computer-mediated communication: a self-presentational theory perspective. Media Psychol. 6 1–22. 10.1207/s1532785xmep0601_1 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Tocci M. (2020). Text Marketing Statistics You Need To Know: SimpleTexting. Available online at: https://simpletexting.com/all-the-text-marketing-statistics-you-need-to-know/ (accessed September 28, 2020). [ Google Scholar ]
• Uhls Y. T., Michikyan M., Morris J., Garcia D., Small G. W., Zgourou E., et al. (2014). Five days at outdoor education camp without screens improves preteen skills with nonverbal emotion cues. Comput. Hum. Behav. 39 387–392. 10.1016/j.chb.2014.05.036 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Valkenburg P. M., Peter J. (2009). Social consequences of the internet for adolescents: a decade of research. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 18 1–5. 10.1111/j.1467-8721.2009.01595.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Vinciarelli A. (2017). “ Body language without a body: nonverbal communication in technology mediated settings ,” in Proceedings of the International Multimedia Conference , (Mountain View, CA: ). [ Google Scholar ]
• Walther J. B., Parks M. R. (2002). “ Cues filtered out, cues filtered ”. Handbook of Interpersonal Communication , eds Knapp M. L., Miller G. R. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publication; ) [ Google Scholar ]

The dying art of conversation – has technology killed our ability to talk  face-to -face?

Senior Lecturer, Media, Communication and Culture, Leeds Beckett University

Disclosure statement

Melanie Chan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Leeds Beckett University provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

View all partners

What with Facetime, Skype , Whatsapp and Snapchat, for many people, face-to-face conversation is used less and less often.

These apps allow us to converse with each other quickly and easily – overcoming distances, time zones and countries. We can even talk to virtual assistants such as Alexa, Cortana or Siri – commanding them to play our favourite songs, films, or tell us the weather forecast.

Often these ways of communicating reduce the need to speak to another human being. This has led to some of the conversational snippets of our daily lives now taking place mainly via technological devices . So no longer do we need to talk with shop assistants, receptionists, bus drivers or even coworkers, we simply engage with a screen to communicate whatever it is we want to say.

In fact, in these scenarios, we tend to only speak to other people when the digital technology does not operate successfully. For instance, human contact occurs when we call for an assistant to help us when an item is not recognised at the self-service checkout .

And when we have the ability to connect so quickly and easily with others using technological devices and software applications it is easy to start to overlook the value of face-to-face conversation. It seems easier to text someone rather than meet with them.

Bodily cues

My research into digital technologies indicates that phrases such as “word of mouth” or “keeping in touch” point to the importance of face-to-face conversation . Indeed, face-to-face conversation can strengthen social ties: with our neighbours, friends, work colleagues and other people we encounter during our day.

It acknowledges their existence, their humanness, in ways that instant messaging and texting do not. Face-to-face conversation is a rich experience that involves drawing on memories, making connections, making mental images, associations and choosing a response. Face-to-face conversation is also multisensory: it’s not just about sending or receiving pre-programmed trinkets such as likes, cartoon love hearts and grinning yellow emojis.

When having a conversation using video you mainly see another person’s face only as a flat image on a screen. But when we have a face-to-face conversation in real life, we can look into someone’s eyes, reach out and touch them. We can also observe the other person’s body posture and the gestures they use when speaking – and interpret these accordingly. All these factors, contribute to the sensory intensity and depth of the face-to-face conversations we have in daily life.

Speaking to machines

Sherry Turkle , professor of social studies of science and technology, warns that when we first “speak through machines, [we] forget how essential face-to-face conversation is to our relationships, our creativity, and our capacity for empathy”. But then “we take a further step and speak not just through machines but to machines”.

In many ways, our everyday lives now involve a blend of face-to-face and technologically mediated forms of communication. But in my teaching and research I explain how digital forms of communication can supplement, rather than replace face-to-face conversation.

At the same time though, it is also important to acknowledge that some people value online communication because they can express themselves in ways they might find difficult through face-to-face conversation.

Look up from your phone

Gary Turk , is a spoken word poet whose poem Look Up illustrates what is at stake by becoming entranced by technological ways of communicating at the expense of connecting with others face-to-face.

Turk’s poem draws attention to the rich, sensory aspects of face-to-face communication, valuing bodily presence in relation to friendship, companionship and intimacy. The central idea running through Turk’s evocative poem is that screen-based devices consume our attention while distancing us from the bodily sense of being with others.

Ultimately the sound, touch, smell and observation of bodily cues we experience when having a face-to-face conversation cannot be fully replaced by our technological devices. Communicating and connecting with others through face-to-face discussion is valuable because it is not something that can be edited, paused or replayed.

So next time you’re deciding between human or machine at the supermarket checkout or whether to get up from your desk and walk to another office to talk to a colleague – rather than sending them an email – it might be worth following Turk’s advice and engaging with the human rather than the screen.

• Social media
• Body language
• Text messages
• Face-to-face
• Conversations

Senior Administrator, Property Contracts

Director of STEM

Community member - Training Delivery and Development Committee (Volunteer part-time)

Chief Executive Officer

Head of Evidence to Action

• Accessibility & Inclusivity
• Breaking News
• International
• Clubs & Orgs
• Humans of SB
• In Memoriam
• Santa Barbara
• Top Features
• Arts & Culture
• Film & TV
• Local Artists
• Local Musicians
• Student Art
• Theater & Dance
• Top A&E
• App Reviews
• Environment
• Nature of UCSB
• Nature of IV
• Top Science & Tech
• Campus Comment
• Letters to the Editor
• Meet Your Neighbor
• Top Opinions
• Illustrations
• Editorial Board

Earth Day Isla Vista – Celebrating Through Music, Nature, and Fun

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. 🙂 😉 🙂 😉 🙂 😉

Just name 1-800-356-9377 or place an order online.

We will aid you discover and deliver the right flowers, vegetation, or gift to celebrate life’s most meaningful moments – from birthday present recommendations, to anniversary floral preparations she is certain to like.

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

Comments are closed.

• Science & Tech

More From Forbes

Has technology killed face-to-face communication.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

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!

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

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.

Download Episode

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.

Subscribe and download via:

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.

Contact APA Office of Public Affairs

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.

You May Also Enjoy

Can Science Make Facebook More Compassionate?

Survival of the Social

Why Are We So Wired to Connect?

Are Some Social Ties Better Than Others?

Where to Find Love on Facebook

How Childcare Boosts Social Capital

Our new Burnside St Headquarters is almost complete! Help us cross the finish line and fund remaining key items we need to complete our new home by viewing our Dream Office Wishlist at  streetroots.org/wishlist

Essay Service Examples Technology Effects of Technology

Technology Has Changed the Way We Communicate: Essay

• Proper editing and formatting
• Free revision, title page, and bibliography
• Flexible prices and money-back guarantee

Bibliography

• (www.dw.com), Deutsche Welle. Fake News '70 Percent More Likely to Be Shared': DW: 08.03.2018. DW.COM, www.dw.comenfake-news-70-percent-more-likely-to-be-shared-42898809.
• 103+ Social Media Sites You Need to Know in 2021. Influencer Marketing Hub, 13 Apr. 2021, influencer marketinghub.com social-media-sites.
• 22, Patricia Austin April, et al. Dangers of Online Dating in 2021 - Everything You Need to Know. Online For Love, 10 Mar. 2021, onlineforlove.comonline-dating-dangers.
• Americans Spending More Time Following the News. Pew Research Center - U.S. Politics & Policy, Pew Research Center, 30 May 2020, www.pewresearch.orgpolitics20100912americans-spending-more-time-following-the-news.
• Byparentcentre, Written, et al. Impact of Technology on Communication. The Parent Centre, 6 Apr. 2021, theparentcentre.org.zaimpact-of-technology-on-communication.
• Dangerous Liaisons: Is Everyone Doing It Online? Daily English Global Blogkasperskycom, www.kaspersky.comblogonline-dating-report.
• Hanlon, Sarah. Dating Apps Can Lead to Less Divorce, According to Research. Theknot.com, The Knot, 24 Jan. 2020, www.theknot.comcontentdating-apps-marriage.
• How Does Social Media Affect News -- and Vice Versa? Common Sense Media: Ratings, Reviews, and Advice, www.commonsensemedia.orgnews-and-media-literacy how-does-social-media-affect-news-and-vice-versa.
• Johnson, Joseph. U.S. Internet User Reach 2025. Statista, 27 Jan. 2021, www.statista.comstatistics590800internet-usage-reach-USA.
• Lin, Melissa. Online Dating Industry: The Business of Love. Toptal Finance Blog, Toptal, 16 Aug. 2018, www.toptal.comfinancebusiness-model-consultants online-dating-industry.
• Milosh, Alex. Importance of Technology in Disaster Management: Atera's Blog. Atera, 19 Jan. 2021, www.atera.comblog10-roles-of-information-technology-in-emergency-preparedness-and-prevention.
• Nace, Trevor. How Technology Is Advancing Emergency Response And Survival During Natural Disasters. Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 15 Dec. 2017, www.forbes.comsitestrevornace20171215how-technology-is-advancing-emergency-response-and-survival-during-natural-disasters?sh=2661ed999cc8.
• Robinson, Lawrence. Social Media and Mental Health. HelpGuide.org, 19 Apr. 2021, www.helpguide.orgarticlesmental-health social-media-and-mental-health.htm.
• Technology's Impact on Health: Anxiety, Depression, and Social Network Use. Dignity Health, www.dignityhealth.orgarticlestechnologys-impact-on-health-anxiety-depression-and-social-network-use.
• University, Stanford. Online Dating Is the Most Popular Way Couples Meet. Stanford News, 5 Feb. 2020, news.Stanford.edu20190821online-dating-popular-way-u-s-couples-meet.
• Yen, Ju-Yu, et al. Social Anxiety in Online and Real-Life Interaction and Their Associated Factors. Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., Jan. 2012, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.govpmcarticlesPMC3260965.

Our writers will provide you with an essay sample written from scratch: any topic, any deadline, any instructions.

Cite this paper

Related essay topics.

Get your paper done in as fast as 3 hours, 24/7.

Related articles

Most popular essays

• Bioengineering
• Biotechnology
• Effects of Technology

Functional foods are known to possess an additional characteristic by adding new ingredients or...

The UN Sustainable Development goals are goals set out to improve upon problems that are an issue...

Biotechnology; an area that has evolved drastically over time involves the use of biological...

• Genetic Modification

Some real threats such as global warming, air pollution have made the necessity of thinking about...

Biotechnologically transformed bodies have been and continues to proliferate in dystopian...

Meat has always been an important part of our diet since it is a rich source of animal proteins....

Every day, a significant percentage of the world's human population consumes food products such as...

Modern biotechnology is recognised as one of a good potential application in agriculture sector...

The basic concepts of the fundamental units of life, encompassing DNA replication, transcription...

Join our 150k of happy users

• Get original paper written according to your instructions
• Save time for what matters most

Fair Use Policy

EduBirdie considers academic integrity to be the essential part of the learning process and does not support any violation of the academic standards. Should you have any questions regarding our Fair Use Policy or become aware of any violations, please do not hesitate to contact us via [email protected].

We are here 24/7 to write your paper in as fast as 3 hours.

Provide your email, and we'll send you this sample!

By providing your email, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy .

Say goodbye to copy-pasting!

Get custom-crafted papers for you.

Enter your email, and we'll promptly send you the full essay. No need to copy piece by piece. It's in your inbox!

How Smartphones Are Affecting Our Relationships

• Personality/Social
• Perspectives on Psychological Science
• Relationship Quality
• Relationships
• Social Media

Whether at the supermarket, in the doctor’s office, or in bed at night, it can be tempting to pick up the device and start scrolling through social media or text messages at any moment. But anyone who has done so in the presence of a close friend, family member, or romantic partner may have left that person feeling ignored, annoyed, or even pushed away. That’s according to a growing body of research on “technoference,” or the potential interference smartphones and other technologies can have in our face-to-face social interactions.

In a  review paper in Perspectives on Psychological Science , University of Arizona psychology professor David Sbarra and his collaborators at Wayne State University in Detroit examine existing research on technoference. They propose an explanation for why humans are so drawn to their smartphones, even when the devices take us out of the moment in our close relationships. It’s because of our evolutionary history, they say.

Humans are hard-wired to connect with others, Sbarra and his colleagues argue. In the course of evolutionary history, we have relied on close relationships with small networks of family and friends for survival as individuals and as a species. These relationships were based on trust and cooperation, which is built when people disclose personal information about themselves and are responsive to others.

Smartphones, and the constant access they provide to text messaging and social media, make it easier than ever for people to disclose personal information and respond to others in their social networks. And these networks are much larger and more far-flung than those of our ancestors.

“The draw or pull of a smartphone is connected to very old modules in the brain that were critical to our survival, and central to the ways we connect with others are self-disclosure and responsiveness,” Sbarra said. “Evolution shaped self-disclosure and responsiveness in the context of small kin networks, and we now see these behaviors being cued more or less constantly by social networking sites and through our phones. We now have the outer-most edges of our social network cue us for responsiveness. Look no further than the next person you see scrolling through Facebook and mindlessly hitting the ‘like’ button while his kid is trying to tell him a story.”

In their paper, Sbarra and his coauthors go beyond the idea that technology is simply attention-grabbing to suggest that there may be an evolutionary mismatch between smartphones and the social behaviors that help form and maintain close social relationships.

“Smartphones and their affordances create new contexts for disclosing information about who we are and for being responsive to others, and these virtual connections may have downstream unwanted effects on our current relationships,” Sbarra said. “When you are distracted into or by the device, then your attention is divided, and being responsive to our partners – an essential ingredient for building intimacy – requires attention in the here and now.”

Divided attention, Sbarra and his colleagues say, may lead to relationship conflict. For example, the review paper cites a study of 143 married women, more than 70 percent of whom reported that mobile phones frequently interfere in their relationships.

Sbarra doesn’t believe smartphones are all bad. In fact, he and his coauthors acknowledge that the devices offer several benefits for health and well-being, and texting provides many couples a route for connecting in a meaningful way. But they say more research is needed to fully understand the impact that virtual connections may have on our real-world relationships and the ways in which the pull of our phones may diminish immediate interactions and lead to conflict.

“We stay away from the question of whether social networking sites and smartphone use are good or bad, per se,” Sbarra said. “Technology is everywhere, and it’s not going away, nor should it. In this paper, we are interested in answering two basic questions: Why do the devices seem to have such a powerful pull on us? And, what is the state of the science on the effects of being pulled away from our in-person interactions and into the virtual world?” 

From there, the authors outline a research agenda they hope can guide future studies. Those studies will be increasingly important as new technologies evolve and become more integrated in our daily lives, Sbarra said.

“Between 2000 and 2018, we’ve seen the largest technological advances, arguably, at any point in the last 100 years,” he said. “We are interested in understanding the role of social relationships in human well-being. We can understand this from the level of what individuals do in relationships, but we can also understand it at the level of societal changes and societal forces that may push on relationships.”

Smartphones have ruined children’s play time and adult’s special time under the sheets! Can’t even go to a bar to have a chill drink without GF having the damn phone on the bar and in her hand half the time. Maybe I should take a hint! Long live the flip phone MOT V600!

I do believe technology devices and media can get in the way of a relationship but technology device and social media isn’t the problem. The couple shall notice the problem and fix. Put off certain time for the phone and use communication, affection with their partner. If the love each other the media they scroll on should be deleted then the problem is solved most likely.

APS regularly opens certain online articles for discussion on our website. Effective February 2021, you must be a logged-in APS member to post comments. By posting a comment, you agree to our Community Guidelines and the display of your profile information, including your name and affiliation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations present in article comments are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of APS or the article’s author. For more information, please see our Community Guidelines .

Please login with your APS account to comment.

For a copy of the research article and access to other Perspectives on Psychological Science research findings, please contact: - 202.293.9300

Does Psychology Need More Effective Suspicion Probes?

Suspicion probes are meant to inform researchers about how participants’ beliefs may have influenced the outcome of a study, but it remains unclear what these unverified probes are really measuring or how they are currently being used.

Science in Service: Shaping Federal Support of Scientific Research  

Social psychologist Elizabeth Necka shares her experiences as a program officer at the National Institute on Aging.

A Very Human Answer to One of AI’s Deepest Dilemmas

Imagine that we designed a fully intelligent, autonomous robot that acted on the world to accomplish its goals. How could we make sure that it would want the same things we do? Alison Gopnik explores. Read or listen!

Privacy Overview

• Relationships

Is Technology Ruining Our Lives?

Ready access to the internet has been a mixed blessing..

Posted April 5, 2013

• Why Relationships Matter
• Take our Relationship Satisfaction Test
• Find a therapist to strengthen relationships

Remember when placing a remote call meant stepping into a free standing phone booth? Electronic and wireless communications have made it possible for us to handle emergencies, reach across the globe to family, and work remotely. But all of that convenience and efficiency comes at a price. The incursion of technology into our homes means less down time. Smart phones and Blackberries rip into relationships and thwart leisure pursuits. And work/life balance seems to be a thing of the past .

Families are feeling it, too. Ask any parent. Many teens seem to have fallen into a tech sinkhole. And their constant texting and abuse of social media may even be holding them back from attaining social and developmental milestones. Likewise adolescent communication skills may have gone the way of the Dictaphone, at least according to one expert . So, when is overuse just that, and when does it become an addiction ?

It’s easy to blame social media outlets, those splashy internet newcomers, for the upending of our privacy. Even therapists have started communicating on Twitter, raising the question of whether private matters can ethically be unveiled for all to see. Bullies, too, have jumped on the bandwagon. Technology has armed them with a new arsenal of hate-tools , raising the dangers of internet aggression to new levels.

I have been thinking about these issues and others, and about the mixed blessing and perils of technology. Even as wireless communications and the internet have opened things up, constant contact and 24/7access imperil mental health and overall quality of life. Has all of the convenience been worth it--what do you think? Please leave a comment.

Stephanie Newman, Ph.D., is the author of Mad Men on the Couch: Analyzing the Minds of the Men and Women of the Hit TV Show , which can be purchased from Barnes & Noble , Indie Bound , and Amazon .

Stephanie Newman, Ph.D. , is the author of the upcoming Barbarians at the PTA and Madmen on the Couch , and a co-editor of Money Talks.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Online Therapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Child Development
• Self Tests NEW
• Therapy Center
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

It’s increasingly common for someone to be diagnosed with a condition such as ADHD or autism as an adult. A diagnosis often brings relief, but it can also come with as many questions as answers.

• Emotional Intelligence
• Gaslighting
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

Technology is destroying social interactions. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Writing9 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

IELTS says that you should write a minimum of 250 words in writing task 2. If you go under word count you will lose marks in task response.

A very long essay will not give you a higher band score.

Aim for between 260 to 290 words in writing task 2. This will ensure a concise essay and will be realistic in terms of time management. You have only 40 minutes to write the essay and you need around 10 minutes of planning time, so you will not be able to write a long essay in 30 minutes.

Discover more tips in The Ultimate Guide to Get a Target Band Score of 7+ » — a book that's free for 🚀 Premium users.

• virtual interactions
• weaker social bonds
• mental health
• shallow relationships
• reduced empathy
• nuances of emotional expression
• counterargument
• physically unable
• cross-cultural exchanges
• interpersonal skills
• communication technology
• Check your IELTS essay »
• Find essays with the same topic
• View collections of IELTS Writing Samples
• Show IELTS Writing Task 2 Topics

AT THE PRESENT TIME, THE POPULATION OF SOME COUNTRIES INCLUDES A RELATIVELY LARGE NUMBER OF YOUNG ADULTS, COMPARED WITH THE NUMBER OF OLDER PEOPLE. DO THE ADVANTAGES OF THIS SITUATION OUTWEIGH THE DISADVANTAGES?

In the past, most working people had only one job. however, nowadays, more and more people have more than one job at the same time. what are the reasons for this development what are the advantages and disadvantages of having more than one job, you have a friend who lives in a different country. you will organise a party soon and have thought to use a foreign recipe. write a letter to the friend asking for a recipe from his/her country for the party you are organizing. in your letter, tell your friend about the party ask for the recipe explain ntwhy you need the recipe from his/her country, some people believe that children should not be given homework every day, while others believe that they must get homework every day in order to be successful at school. discuss both views and give your opinion., nowadays, many schools find it profitable to sell unhealthy food and sugary drinks to students during lunch breaks. is this a positive or negative development give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience..