Or, Social Media and The Relationship Disconnect
“Don’t take your love away from me,
Don’t you leave my heart in misery,
If you go then I’ll be blue
Cause breaking up is hard to do.”
[credits: Songwriters Howard Greenfield and Neil Sedaka]
Unlike the lyrics to the song, the pseudo-relationships we have on social media are easier to break up. Over time, we are made to feel that we have hundreds of “friends”, a vast amount of “connections”. The majority of these are but passing clicks of a button due to a common interest, and nothing more. They are made in hopes of creating more business, or to find those in simpatico with us.
A pattern we see is using social media and electronic forums for “quick fixing”. A recent Google search for ‘Find a plumber in Louisville’ resulted in 445,000 results. Mixed among those results were sites that included paid and unpaid listings (Angies List, Thumbtack, YellowPages), as well as links directed to individual business web pages. More and more buyers of a service don’t look at the internet connections as a means to build a relationship.
Isn’t that strange? When it comes to personal relationships, people want to find a soul mate using the internet, but not when conducting business?
Getting Face to Face
Psychologists and behavioral scientists have long known that facial expressions, hand gestures, voice tone and the like provide more clues to listeners than the words themselves.
“It’s harder to follow cues such as expressions on people’s faces in two dimensions,” says Dr. Carlos Ferran, D.B.A., assistant professor of Management Information Systems at Pennsylvania State University, who specializes in research that develops a better understanding of how technology mediated communications differ from face-to-face communications.
Dr. Richard D. Arvey, a psychologist and professor with the National University of Singapore, agrees. “You can’t see someone frowning on a conference call,” he notes.
Dr. Arvey uncovered research attesting to the benefits of face-to-face meetings while preparing a report for Hilton Hotels called “Why Face-to-Face Business Meetings Matter.” Studies indicate 77 percent of people believe that offsite meetings are a necessity not a luxury; 85 percent believe face-to-face meetings are more likely to result in breakthrough thinking; and 82 percent believe that meetings bring out the best in people.
Quoted from The Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/ad/article/globaltravel-face
What has happened to us? Has social media socialized us in a completely different way?
Do we really want it to be easy to break up?
Have we forgotten how to have a conversation? Here’s a GREAT TED Talk about 10 ways to have a better conversation.
That’s it for now. Have an amazing day, and let’s have a conversation soon!
Ray
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