[ad_1]
COVID-19 has seen all the rules change when it comes to social engagement. Workplaces and schools have been closed, gatherings have been banned, and use of social media and other online tools has increased to bridge the gap.
But as we continue to adapt to the various restrictions, we must remember that social media is the refined sugar of social interaction. In the same way that producing a bowl of white granules means removing minerals and vitamins from the sugar cane plant, social media removes many valuable and sometimes necessarily challenging parts of “full” human communication.
Basically, social media dispenses with the nuance of dealing with a person in person and all the signaling complexities of body language, vocal tone, and speed of expression. The immediacy and anonymity of social media also eliminates the (healthy) challenges of paying attention, properly processing information, and responding with courtesy.
As a result, social media is a quick and easy way to communicate. But while the removal of complexity is certainly convenient, a diet rich in connections through social media has been widely shown to have a detrimental effect on our physical and emotional well-being.
Increased anxiety and depression are well known side effects. There are also consequences for decision making based on simplistic and “refined” sources of information. We may be less demanding in evaluating such information, responding with much less thoughtfulness. We see a tweet and it activates us immediately, not unlike the sugar hit from a candy bar.
More complex types of communication demand more of us, as we learn to recognize and engage with the complexities of face-to-face interaction – the pace, closeness, and body language that make up the nonverbal communication cues that are missing from social networks. media.
These signals may even exist because we have evolved to be with others, to work with others. Consider, for example, the hormone oxytoxin, which is associated with confidence and lower levels of stress and is activated when we are in physical company with others.
Another indicator of confidence and commitment is the fact that group heart rates are in sync when working together. But achieving such a rhythm of communication takes effort, skill, and practice.
Pause to think
There is an interesting element of elite athletic performance known as a “quiet eye.” It refers to the brief moment of pause before a tennis player serves or a soccer player takes a penalty to focus on the goal. Good communicators also seem to take this pause, whether in a presentation or a conversation, a moment lost in the rush of social media for an immediate anonymous response.
Having said all this, I don’t think social media, or table sugar, is fundamentally wrong. As with a slice of cake on a special occasion, it can be a treat, a treat, and a rush. But problems appear when it is our dominant form of communication. Like just eating cake, it weakens us, leaving us much less able to thrive in more challenging environments.
COVID-19 has meant that a greater proportion of many people’s lives are spent online. But even Zoom meetings and gatherings, while more intimate than a tweet or social media post, also have limitations and lead to fatigue.
In physiological terms, part of the reason these experiences are so challenging is that we are supposed to connect in person. We are programmed to deal with all aspects of physically present personal contact, from awkward conversations to enormously rewarding exchanges.
We suffer without it. We see this in energy levels, general health, and mental stability. It has both a physical and an emotional effect. In fact, researchers have shown for more than a decade that loneliness kills. What the research has yet to show is whether social media mitigates this.
Again, virtual meetings are not inherently wrong. But they are not enough, in human physiological terms, to support what we have come to need after 300,000 years of evolution.
Even in the days before the coronavirus, social media had become a dominant medium of communication for many. Quick and easy, but also often mean, critical, fleeting, something that doesn’t bring out the best in us.
The hope in offering this analogy is that by contextualizing how social media works in terms of our physiology, we can begin to understand how we may need to balance social media with other, more challenging, but ultimately more satisfying forms of communication. And also how we may need to design virtual methods of communication that encompass more of the physiology of social contact we need and help us thrive.
Mc Schraefel, Professor of Computer Science and Human Performance, University of Southampton. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
[ad_2]
