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We don’t have to apologize to each other; we can type, “I’m sorry.” And hit send. But face-to-face, you get to see that you have hurt the other person. The other person gets to see that you are upset. It is this realization that triggers the beginning of forgiveness.
face-to-face apology is an occasion to practice empathic skills. If you are the penitent, you are called upon to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. And if you are the person receiving the apology, you, too, are asked to see things from the other side so that you can move toward empathy. In a digital connection, you can sidestep all this.
The texted “I’m sorry” means, on the one hand, “I no longer want to have tension with you; let’s be okay,” and at the same time says, “I’m not going to be next to you while you go through your feelings; just let me know when our troubles are over.” When I have a fight with my boyfriend and the fight ends with an “I’m sorry” text, it is 100 percent certain that the specific fight will come back again. It hasn’t been resolved.
The “I’m sorry” text is a missed opportunity. These opportunities can be seized. Parents can insist that their children’s apologies be done in person.
Now, if he wants to cancel a plan—say, dinner with his grandparents—he has to make a phone call to break the date.
In-person apologies are no less potent in business settings.
“Apologize to him. Face-to-face. You were wrong. Say you are sorry.”
not being able to say you’re sorry face-to-face is “like driving a car but not knowing how to go in reverse.”
When we move from conversation to connection, we shortchange ourselves. My concern is that over time we stop caring—or perhaps worse, we forget there is a difference.
Connecting in sips may work for gathering discrete bits of information or for saying “I am thinking about you.” Or even for saying “I love you.” But connecting in sips doesn’t work so well for an apology. It doesn’t work so well when we are called upon to see things from another’s point of view. In these cases, we have to listen. We have to respond in real time. In these exchanges we show our temperament and character. We build trust.
Face-to-face conversation unfolds slowly. It teaches patience. We attend to tone and nuance. When we communicate on our digital devices, we learn different habits.
As we ramp up the volume and velocity of our online connections, we want immediate answers. In order to get them, we ask simpler questions; we dumb down our communications, even on the most important matters. And...
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You express yourself but can maintain a certain distance.
going to the images is also a way for these young people to slip away from our group conversation just as it becomes challenging.
When things get complicated, it’s easier to send a picture than to struggle with a hard idea.
“Look at me when you spe...
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We don’t ask children to use their words or to look at us to make them obedient. We want words to be associated with feelings. Eye contact is the most powerful path to human connection.
digital conversations are valuable because they are “low risk.”
in conversations that could potentially take unexpected directions, people don’t always try to get things “right.” They learn to be surprised by the things they say. And to enjoy that experience. The philosopher Heinrich von Kleist calls this “the gradual completion of thoughts while speaking.”
“ideas come from speaking.”
one of the good things about sending images is that it makes communication even less risky than sending edited texts.
the more you manipulate them, he says, the more you can keep them ambiguous and “open to interpretation.”
you can’t be hurt if you haven’t decl...
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In the new communications culture, interruption is not experienced as interruption but as another connection.
When people say they’re “addicted” to their phones, they are not only saying that they want what their phones provide. They are also saying that they don’t want what their phones allow them to avoid.
When talk becomes difficult or when talk turns to quiet, we’ve given ourselves permission to go elsewhere. To avoid life’s challenges and boring bits.
studies show that open screens degrade the performance of everyone who can see them—their owners and everyone sitting around them.
In work, love, and friendship, relationships of mutuality depend on listening to what might be boring to you but is of interest to someone else. In conversation, a “lull” may be on its way to becoming something else. If a moment in a conversation is slow, there is no way to know when things will pick up except to stay with the conversation.
Before technology allowed us to be anywhere anytime, conversation with other people was a big part of how we satisfied our brains’ need for stimulation. But now, through our devices, our brains are offered a continuous and endlessly diverting menu that requires less work.
Every time you check your phone in company, what you gain is a hit of stimulation, a neurochemical shot, and what you lose is what a friend, teacher, parent, lover, or co-worker just said, meant, felt.
Technology does not make emotions easy. Social media can make emotional life very hard indeed.
Online life was associated with a loss of empathy and a diminished capacity for self-reflection.
If you are only partially present, it’s easy to miss out on the emotional and nonverbal subtext of what people are saying to you.
And you are not focusing on your own fe...
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Facebook, Nass reminds us, has no “thumbs-down.”
on social media, everyone learns to share the positive.
if you spend a lot of time online—responding to positive emotions—you won’t get practice with this more complex processing.
As a result, says Nass, your reaction time will be slowed down.
Among the wrong lessons they learn: First, negative emotions are something that unsuccessful kids have rather than normal parts of life that need to be addressed and coped with; second, it is natural to allow distraction and interruption to take you away from other people.
“Technology does not provide a sentimental education.” People do.
Reclaiming conversation begins with reclaiming our attention.
College students who are using any form of media are likely to be using four at a time.
Hyperconnected, we imagine ourselves more efficient, but we are deceived. Multitasking degrades our performance at everything we do, all the while giving us the feeling that we are doing better at everything.
Frequent multitasking is associated with depression, social anxiety, and trouble reading human emotions.
conversation, remarkably, seems able to reverse it.
Instead of a quick text if you find a conversation going stale, make an effort to engage your peers.
we are wired to crave instant gratification, a fast pace, and unpredictability.
Those who multitask most frequently don’t get better at it; they just want more of it.
A twenty-four-year-old young woman who works at a start-up tells me that she is no longer able to focus on one thing or one person at a time.
“When you deal with people face-to-face, you are only seeing one of them at a time.
