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In his recent column in the New York Times, Bruce Feiler, in an article entitled, “Hey Kids, Look at Me When We’re Talking,” wrote about his dismay about how children will not look you in the eye when they speak with you. Mr. Feiler—whose musings I always find interesting and insightful—questions whether this change in our ability to communicate when he says, “Many point the finger at technology.” I agree and believe that the lack of eye contact has become more widespread in just the last few years. I don’t blame it on technology per se but rather I believe that the smartphone, what I call a major game changer in our world, is to blame for our lack of eye contact when we communicate. In fact, I am convinced that the smartphone has made it so easy to communicate without being in someone’s presence that it makes sense when he quotes a Pew Research Center study that “among 12- to 17-year olds texting has become the primary means of communication, outstripping human contact.”
We now all carry a device in our pocket or our purse that is more powerful and contains more electronic connections than most computers just a few years back. We have seen recently that many people, young and older, carry their smartphone in their hand at the ready to respond to a new alert, notification or just check in because they haven’t done so for a few minutes. As I discussed in a recent Psych Today post, Dr. Nancy Cheever found that if you deny heavy smartphone users access to their device they start getting anxious 10 minutes after turning it off or relinquishing control and that anxiety continues to increase over the next hour. Even moderate smartphone users get more anxious but it takes longer for the anxiety to arise and it levels off at a level far lower than those heavy users.
Feiler touches on a fascinating study by Dr. Yalda Uhls where preteens were first asked to view a series of photos and videos and determine the emotion being depicted and then half spent five days at an overnight camp without any devices and the other half continued their daily smartphone use until a week later when both groups again saw the same photos and videos and were again asked what emotions were being portrayed. After just five days at camp (without technology) preteens were significantly better at identifying nonverbal cues.
Nonverbal cues are extremely important in understanding communication. Much of what we learn about communication as we grow from a newborn into an adult is how to read someone’s moods from body language, facial expressions and other nonverbal cues. We learn to know if mommy is upset and to leave her alone (or give her a hug) and we need to know when something good happened by looking at the expression on daddy’s face. By the time we enter our teen years we should have a dozen years of practice at reading faces. But, if children, preteens and teens are cutting down their face-to-face communication and relying on texting, social media and other electronic connection modalities as the majority of their person-to-person interactions, what will they sacrifice?
What they lose, I believe, is the ability to truly relate to another person on an emotional level. In a study that my lab recently submitted for publication, we found that “virtual empathy” is undeniably real. You can sense another person’s emotions and you can ascertain what they are thinking and feeling from their written words (plus an emoji or two). How do you feel when your birthday rolls around and you get dozens, if not hundreds, of happy birthday wishes on Facebook? It certainly feels good even when you know that all of your Facebook friends have been alerted that it is your birthday and, for the most part, those wishes are simply “Happy Birthday!” In our study we compared empathy dispensed online with empathy dispensed in the real world and found that college students felt six times more supported by real-world empathy than by virtual empathy. This suggests that to feel as supported as getting a hug you would need six “virtual hugs.”
I am curious what Dr. Uhls would find if she followed those preteens who are now young teenagers. Will they be better at understanding the nuances of communication? Will their brief respite from technology help them read emotional cues better? Will they be capable of being more empathic to others? My guess is that it will take more than a few days without technology to learn to assess nonverbal cues. It will require parents to be parents and set limits and guidelines on their children’s behavior. When I speak with parent groups I talk about this issue and advise parents that when their children are young they need to ensure that their children are getting five times more nontech time than tech time. And, more important, the nontech time needs to include a lot of face-to-face experience with other children, teens, adults, parents, other family members, anyone who they can observe and interact with all possible cues, verbal and nonverbal. As their children get older tech time will increase naturally as their friends and fellow students are required to use more technology. Even as teenagers I suggest that parents tip the ratio only to 5:1 which means that for every five minutes of technology they need to spend an equivalent minute of nontech time and that that time should be spent in face-to-face situations with others to allow for more time to develop their nonverbal cue antennae.
We do our children, preteens and teenagers a disservice when we allow them to submerge themselves in a morass of virtual communications at the expense of spending time learning how to interpret nonverbal cues. We are not robots. We are humans and as humans we have a need and a requirement to communicate with others who use both verbal and nonverbal cues to transmit their feeling-laden messages. Perhaps if we helped our children learn these skills we will eradicate cyberbullying, Facebook wars and miscommunications and help our children lift their heads out of their phones and make eye contact so that we will know what they are thinking and feeling and they will see enough of our nonverbal language to understand more than just our verbal message.
