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The importance of face-to-face communication

Posted by mcdamas in August 1st, 2008

As human being, of course, we need to socialize as it is one of ways to live our life and to survive. There are many ways to do so, be it directly or indirectly. We can socialize directly face-to-face with others like through chatting, discussing, debating, and many more. However, sometimes we also are engaged in indirect communication without facing each other like through the phone, sms, e-mail, morse, etc. From what we do in communication, we get not only advantages but also disadvantages.

Today, indirect communication is what we commonly do since this type makes our communication easier and time saving. For example, we can get in touch to tell someone about important things in a minute at real time by telephone, sms, e-mail, or fax. Easy and quick is all that people need in this modern way of life.

However, indirect communication -especially through internet- is so impoverished that much of the subtle, non-verbal messages that we normally rely on to govern our social responses are missing. The result has been labeled “the online dis-inhibition effect”, and it is the reason behind cyber rudeness.

It is obvious that indirect communication has to some extent transitioned to maintaining social capital through simple, cheap telephone calls. Indirect communication like internet online has often been tainted by the willingness of other members to be more caustic and extreme than they might in real life be. Online interactions often provide anonymity because it makes us able to edit our utterances until they fit the image we want to project, something which is not quite so simple in a real time environment. Since our words are our only connection to others, it is much easier to be duplicitous or even self-deluding. In other words, we communicate in an artificial and decorative way.

As mentioned, direct communication is a two-direction communication in which both interlocutors talk face-to-face. The effectiveness to convey the message is better than indirect communication because by being face-to-face, it provides us with access to identify and understand the interlocutor’s facial expressions so that we also can detect what feeling comes across during a conversation. Not to mention that we also can detect the lies.

Direct communication benefits us for improving our lives both biologically and psychologically. Having close and frequent connections with other members of a society makes us all healthier. It also does much to promote behaviors which are beneficial for the whole society and encourage a more socially oriented populace.

In short, we should keep in mind the importance of face-to-face communication. While we maximize the abilities and benefits of a new trend of (electronic) communication technologies, we need to keep in mind to always engage in local communities and physical interaction for the subtle and important benefits which they provide. (credit to Achlam, Arieadne and Shita, HI-2/311)