Kids these days don’t know how to talk to each other!
It’s normal these days to see a group of teenagers or twenty-somethings all sitting with each other in silence, heads down, eyes glued to a screen, captivated by the world within their devices. Simultaneous chats with multiple friends, voice messages, images, text, and videos. Communicating with animated gifs, adding stickers to images to create a message, snapping a short video or capturing a few seconds of audio. This is the world of communication that our teenagers and “millennials” (and increasingly, we all) inhabit. But did you notice what was missing? Talking. There is very little talking! The most fundamental form of communication is missing.
I’m 47 years old. When I was growing up, I sat around the table with my family and talked. As we talked around the table there came a time when I was reprimanded with a, “don’t talk to your sister like that!” or “that’s no way to talk to your mother!” followed by a demand to offer an apology. These were the moments where the lines were drawn around the art of conversation. As I grew up and sat around the table, sat in class, or interacted in a workplace, different lines were drawn. Different lines around different types of conversations. I learned how to talk to my sister, my mother, my teachers, my classmates, and my colleagues. Lines were drawn.
Through all those face-to-face conversations, when I crossed a line I saw the impact of my words on the person I was communicating with. I observed their emotional response to my words. When I crossed the, “that’s no way to talk to your mother” line, I heard the intensity in my father’s voice and saw the hurt on my mother’s face. Those two things drew the lines that marked the boundaries of what was acceptable and what was not. That observation of the emotional impact of my words helped create the boundary. That demand from my father to apologize showed me where the edge was.
Today, in our non-face-to-face-communication world, that “observable” aspect of the impact of communicating with others has almost gone. Not only because a massive amount of our interpersonal communication has dissolved into devices, but also because the time previously spent sitting and looking at each other and communicating has now been hijacked by devices. We sit together in the living room and all look at devices, not at each other! A double whammy of not-observing-the-boundaries!
Recently I watched, first-hand, as a group of high school seniors tried to discuss an emotive topic. When they began to feel the emotion caused by the disagreement around the topic, things became personal and they didn’t know what to do. They didn’t have the tools to agree to disagree. The level of observable emotion made them feel vulnerable and uncomfortable. Not knowing how to talk it out, the comments shifted from the topic and became personal. As they became personal the discussion stopped. But not really. After the face-to-face discussion stopped, the conversation was transferred into a WhatsApp group they all were a part of. There, it continued in a much more personal and hurtful manner, slandering each other for their views, disrespecting each other, and name-calling because of opinions. The extremely unhealthy discussion flourished! In the absence of the observable emotional impact caused by their comments, the tone became extremely toxic and disrespectful. When this sort of conversation began face-to-face they could not continue. When it became digital it became so much worse!
I’m not saying this is how all teenagers communicate all the time, but it would be almost impossible to find a teenager who has not experienced this! It is no longer possible to simply “have a class discussion”. Students need to be taught how to have a discussion. They need to be given the words to use when they disagree. They need to be taught what to say when they have an alternate opinion. They need to have a script that gives them tips on how to thank the previous speaker for their perspective before presenting their own. They need to be TAUGHT discussion skills BEFORE they begin to discuss anything.
We all need to play a part in helping our young people of today navigate this extremely tricky communication landscape. As parents and teachers, we need to teach our children how to talk to each other. We need to create spaces in our lives where there are no screens and where the art of conversation is practiced. We need to teach our children how to disagree with a person’s idea without disliking the person. We need to teach our children how to resolve a conflict with a person by talking directly to that person, face-to-face. We need to demonstrate and model and set the example of having conversations with each other. We need to remember that we are role models for our children in the use of digital devices.
Kids these days don’t know how to talk to each other! We need to teach them!