In-Person Conversations are Dying? Good!

We often hear that people are becoming too entrenched in their smartphones, no longer participating in “normal” human interaction, ignoring one another and being glued to their phones, no longer paying attention to the real world around them. No longer conversing with their peers but rather typing away on their phones.

This is seen as cold, as though we’re forsaking our human interactions, losing touch with one another. Many have voiced their concerns with this phenomena, trying to call attention to what they view as a problem.

But is it really a problem? The concern seems to be that we are no longer paying attention to one another and so missing out on life. Are we, though? If what we were “missing” was so important and fascinating would we really be missing it? Would we truly be diverting out attention from something more interesting in favour of something less interesting?

Michael from Vsauce explains how this behaviour actually isn’t anything new, but rather the same old thing just with a new medium, the smartphone.

So what is so enticing about this behaviour? Why are we so eager to escape into a book, movie or our phones? John Green explains in his TED talk that the internet, and by extension, our smartphones, have built a network for conversation, for sharing knowledge. For John, these groups allowed him to discover information that interested him and to discuss those facts further to create a dialogue with other people who were of the same mind as him.

Our books and movies and computers allow us to escape to a place we feel more comfortable, a place where we can be ourselves, find like-minded individuals and converse about the topics that we are interested in. Those conversations are difficult to come by in person, we have friends but our interests don’t always align, we meet and talk about topics we care little about and avoid discussing what really interests us because our interests may not align.

What if they don’t like what I like, what if what I like is considered weird? We’re restrained by these imposed social etiquette’s on how to converse with one another, how to lead into a topic, but I don’t want to lead into it because it may never actually lead to where I want it to go. In person conversations navigate in any manner of ways, leading back and forward between different topics, barely given any chance for a focused discussion.

Pop culture dictates what topics are appropriate to talk about but what if we don’t want to talk about pop culture? What if I don’t care about the “game” last night. What if I don’t care about what the Kardashian’s are up to this week? Taylor Swift dropped a new album? Thanks but I’ll stick to Bach. We’ve set a tone for society by making certain things popular, leaving other things to fall into the niche, and if you’re part of the niche, then you’re not popular.

Taylor Swift dropped a new album? Thanks but I’ll stick to Bach

The internet gives a place for any topic to be discussed, every interest has a place on the web and a following of people to converse with. These groups allow us to converse openly about what we’re passionate about without barriers. The topic is set, no leading into it, just jump right in. Share your opinion, share your knowledge, learn from someone else, ask a question, have a discussion.

While in-person interactions can often be stale and boring, riddled with the curse of small talk, online conversations allow participants to jump straight into the fray. We make posts about our thoughts or sharing posts that we agree or relate to, it allows us to dive right to the heart of the topics that most fascinate us. We follow and subscribe to the topics and people that interest us, converse on matters which we enjoy and don’t stray from the subject, conversations can range in complexity based on what the individuals choices.

With groups and forums, topic are divided and subdivided so one can maintain their topics of interest with ease, maintaining multiple different conversations at once while also keeping each of them separate and ordered. Our phones allow us to have the conversations that matter to us at any time with anyone, anywhere around the world. We’ve bridged the geographic gap and now have access to a whole world of people who have different experiences and ideas they can share with us.

No longer are we stuck having to share the same interests as our peers simply because society mandates that to live a happy life we need real world friends. This seems like a problem to some people because they believe that somehow the “real” world and the “online” world are different, as if communicating through a computer no longer makes the person on the other end, human. We can no longer associate a physical presence to those we speak to online so it’s thought of as cold and cut off, because somehow having conversations in person is important even if they’re meaningless to you, because somehow physical proximity to the person matters more than having a fruitful conversation.

With less in-person communication, we are becoming involved in more online communication; with people who share our interests, allowing us to have more in depth, more productive, more meaningful conversations and isn’t that the whole point?

Now of course with everything good there’s always an element of bad, social networks can be addicting, some people become obsessed with it, but so can anything that makes us feel good. What we should be doing is learning to understand it, not demonizing it and running away, because we’ll end up making a manageable problem into something worse.