In today’s age, communication is more convenient than ever.

We can immediately communicate with one another with various degrees of separation.

These separations scale from texts or emails, which are very impersonal and rather dissociated, all the way to video chat which is rather personal and intimate.

And having all these capacities of communication is great, and it seems that all forms of communication have a funny way of falling into their own category.

People from work and education seem to naturally fall under the email category.  Acquaintances a step closer,  interact from afar by liking and occasionally commenting on social media. Friends outside the immediate scope, communicate primarily on social media in messenger. Close friends, text throughout the day in groups or one on one. Closer friends may communicate by an actual phone call. And the closest and most comfortable of  friends, communicate by video chat.

With all these forms, it allows for communication and connectability never seen before. Things can be done much faster. You can catch up with old school friends much easier. You can make plans immediately. It’s incredibly efficient and yields great results.

But these forms all lack one thing, the element of face to face.

All platforms and even to a lesser degree video chat, are rather dissociating and impersonal.

They seem to allow a spark of negative behaviors.

In email, people are often condescending, sarcastic, and short. In texts, people can become irritated and attacking. On social media, people can be aggressive without worrying about physical backlash. On the phone, it can be easy to talk over one another and misunderstand tone. In video, it’s close… but the human element still isn’t there.

There really isn’t much we can do about it, but be cautious and caring.

We should all ask ourselves as we are communicating throughout the day, “Would I say or act like this to this person if they were standing right in front of me?”