The society we live in has a variety of generations. We have generations that grew up with human interaction. These are people born until the 1960s. Then we have generations who had to embrace technology to adapt to new challenges in both everyday life and the workplace. Here we have people born between 1960 and 1980. The next generation, between 1980 and 2000, belongs to those who developed technology. Out of curiosity, they found themselves in the solutions that technology could provide. Then we have the generations that saw technology as an opportunity and used it for personal development, connection, communication, knowledge, and so on. These are the millennials, born between 2000 and 2010.
Thus, we can easily see that the more technology has entered our lives, the more generations have changed. Therefore, as a result of embracing technology by the generations from 1970 to 2000, the generations of their children, i.e. those born after 2010, were raised in technology and in the last two years educated in a style that moved them away from social interaction.
Although all the research so far has strongly argued that humans are social beings, who need to interact with people, technology has made it possible to fulfill this feeling without getting into face-to-face interaction. As a result, more and more people are moving to online communication.
The advantages of online communication
Because technology creates a virtual environment of limitless communication where each of us can expose what information we want and hide what we consider to be private, many people chose online communication to the disadvantage of face-to-face interaction.
Some of the strengths of online communication, online education, and telework are:
The ability to connect with people from different parts of the world
Technology has gradually become normalcy, something necessary in everyday life and accessible in many parts of the world. The expansion of technology has made communication much easier. For this reason, technology and the new communication tools made it possible and easy to exchange experiences between researchers, specialists in different fields. This encouraged borrowing the best ideas and practices from different parts of the world.
Later, technology represented a solution for those who were looking for a social group in which to integrate. The new type of communication allowed us to search and bond with the people we like and fit in terms of intention, occupation, interests, etc. As a result, we form online communities where we express ourselves freely and benefit from that sense of belonging.
Possibility to avoid verbal and physical abuse
Although many people miss ‘face-to-face’ communication, those who had abusive bosses, or verbally and physically abusive colleagues, the telework gave them the opportunity to avoid many of these actions with a strong psychological impact.
In the same idea, technology has been embraced especially by teenagers who were victims of bullying at school.
Creating a space with the friends we want
In real life it is harder to establish social relationships, maintain them and create a circle of friends only with the people we get along with. In the online environment, however, we can only communicate with the people we get along with and we can avoid people who make us feel bad.
Accumulating useful skills for telework
Online communication makes it much easier to adapt to new technological means in the workplace. People who interacted with technology more often in everyday life adapted very easily to teleworking during the Pandemic. As an example, we have employees from private firms. On the other hand, we have the example of the employees from the state administration where things move a little slower. Unlike private companies that are required to comply with European recommendations on lifelong learning, research, innovation, and technology, and which are in constant competition to improve working methods for higher profit; the state institutions do not have such pressures and have often embraced the traditional way of doing things.
Gathering new knowledge and ways of doing something
Here we value the knowledge useful in everyday life, like information related to diet, hygiene, equipment care, easier methods of cleaning various objects, and so on.
The advantages of face-to-face communication
Each tradition the humans have been clinging on so hard in the past has been backed up by strong ideas and arguments. Similarly is the case of face-to-face communication. Since the appearance of technological means for online communication, there are specialists highlighting the importance of face-to-face communication. Several of them are:
The capacity of reading the non-verbal language
One of the reasons why many of us embrace communication through messages is because we can convey the desired message without showing signs of doubt, fear, worry, etc. In face-to-face communication, we do not have the luxury of hiding our emotions and intentions. This is a problem for the people who find it difficult to overcome the blockages established in childhood. However, face-to-face communication is meant to help us in daily life. One reason is to differentiate between malicious and sincere people. Another reason is the ease of conveying the character of a message, our state of mind; that is, the reality itself.
Accumulating important knowledge in the current social system
Although in the last two years the pandemic has easily pushed the world to the online environment, as a species we cannot have a life completely free of social interaction. We need to form habits of social interaction for survival, to buy food, to find different utilities, to benefit from services, to find our life partners, etc. Therefore, even if technology allows us to communicate without exposing our vulnerabilities, the social system and the human needs clearly emphasize the need for face-to-face interaction for the accumulation of habits based on moral, ethical, and human principles, such as how we should communicate, the rules in a discussion, the limits of communication, and so on.
Preserving the human character
Face-to-face interaction is important for maintaining human character, as it involves exposing oneself to others and accepting others with all good and bad. This encourages the formation of a community and the universalization of acceptance and physical tolerance. At the other end of the spectrum, we have the comfort and the ‘personal bubble’ we live in, encouraged by the online environment, which can make us lonely, anxious, and reluctant to interact socially.
Accepting differences
Social media platforms disseminate information about new trends in both the fashion world and personal development. If in some cases this can be inspiring and good; then the orientation towards social uniformity only encourages consumerism and internal conflicts. From a psychological point of view, today’s society is strongly affected by the normalization of uniformity and the non-acceptance of differences.
Face-to-face communication makes us accept each other as we are. The online environment, on the other side because of making it possible to hide our vulnerabilities or the things that seem unsightly or bad to us, initiates a phenomenon of social uniformity in which we tend to compete to look as much as possible according to the models we follow. The problem appears when at a large scale this phenomenon comes to swallow the things that define our character and make us interesting, original, and special.
Avoiding social imbalance
We have been trying to hide our emotions, imperfections, thoughts, and intentions for thousands of years. Technology allowed this, but it also created an imbalance between less intelligent people who easily express themselves and turn stupidity into something ‘viral’, and intelligent people who choose to remain silent. This creates a social imbalance in which democracy is stretched to the brim. Basically, we are talking about a society in which communication is no longer moderated by moral and ethical principles that set some limits of expression. As a result, we have a ‘sick’ society where the conflicts initiated online transform into real psychological problems.
Face-to-face communication has moral and ethical rules that influence our speech and actions; therefore, being more beneficial to our society than online communication.
Conclusions:
Given the advantages and disadvantages mentioned in the case of the two types of communications, we must understand that online communication is part of our daily lives and we cannot avoid this phenomenon. On the other hand, we cannot deny the importance of face-to-face communication in order to know the reality.
Therefore, even if the future seems to move towards incorporating technology even more into our lives, face-to-face communication remains a vital aspect of the human species; a psychological and social need. In spite of the fact that technology will come even closer to us in daily practices, face-to-face communication will remain a feature of our society, even if in many cases it will be replaced by online communication.
P.s. We need people to create moments and technology to capture, plan, and put them into practice.
