What has happened to our Communication?
Wow, I’ve just watched a fascinating TED Talk with the Brio Group Team this morning that really makes you think about what has happened with the backward evolution of our human interaction, communication and lack of personal contact.
Sherry Turkle, author of ‘Alone Together’, explains how todays generation of teenagers have been brought up competing with mobile phones from an early age. She gives examples of that feeling when you get picked up at school and you have that connection with your parent with instant eye contact at first sight and you feel like you’re everything in the world to them. Now all too often kids are greeted by their parents on their mobiles.
Parents have taken multi-tasking to an extreme which is affecting the kids of today. Another example Sherry shares is how a mum is reading a bedtime book in one hand and in the other hand checking her mobile. So multi-tasking has lead to multi-lifing.
We’ve all become so accustomed to instant gratification that we’ve dumbed down our communication online to get quicker responses and in turn less thought is required from all parties.
Even I admit that I prefer emails to phone calls as I’ve become so quick with them at work and I find it effective to keep the paper trail if I need to refer back to it. But not using the phone is almost impossible for me as a Studio Manager / Design Account Manager, not only is that bad customer service but that strong relationship gets lost and watered down.
I have overtime worked out a method that best suits my heavy workload and that is batching my work in zones; so I can be my bubbly happy self on the phone and on the other end of the scale I can zone out and do the serious stuff that also keeps my clients happy like quoting, research and invoicing.
I found Sherry’s talk pretty deep but also very true! Watch this TED Talk and let me know your thoughts and share what you’ve taken from it.
Are you going to become aware of your behaviour and possible change it for the next generation?
Yours in Communication,
Amber van Sloten
