The Unique Challenges with New Age Communication

     Hello everyone! Welcome to another post here on my blog. I hope everything has been going alright with you all. Commnication is a HUGE part of our everyday life. We used it all the time, every single day. It's crazy how much communication has evolved over time. A couple hundred years ago, people would never have guessed that you could send people messages with the click of a button instantaneously. However, despite the new advancements' technology has undergone, there are still unique challenges that we face due to these evolutions. 

    When you're talking to someone, a large chunk of your message, about 51%, comes from your nonverbal communication. This includes things like body posture, movement, and body language. 35% of your message comes from the tone or inflection of your voice. Lastly, only 14% of your message is actually from the words that you say. This was really surprising to me. I thought that words were super important for conveying the right message that you want, although it does make sense why this is the case. It's very easy to pick up things from your body language and tone, rather than solely from the words that are said. Doesn't it make sense how the new age of communication has made it even harder to effectively communicate what we actually want our words to mean? When you send a message over text, you have the words that are said; however, you are completely missing the tone and non-verbal communication. It causes the message to not come across as well as it could've been. 

    And even when we look at talking over the phone, it definitely has its challenges as well. While being a better option than a simple message, it still misses the non-verbal part of communication. Talking to someone face to face is the most effective form of communication; however, sometimes it feels like it has been completely forgotten about and replaced with new, lesser means of communicating. It's tough because the part that you are trying to express to someone else, is expressed ineffectively. 

    There are many different ways and strategies that we can apply when talking with others. There's something called the disarming technique, which involves finding some truth in what the other person is saying, even if it doesn't seem too reasonable. I've definitely seen that a lot in past conversations that I have had. Normally, when you are in an argument with someone, agreeing with them is that last thing that they would expect to hear from you. It helps to deescalate a bad situation and it also calms the other party down, helping them to be more willing to talk it out. If both parties are raising their voices and arguing, the adrenaline in both is skyrocketing and no one is in the right headspace. 

    It also very important to put yourself in the other person's shoes as well. To have empathy. It gives you new perspective as to how the other person might be feeling and how you'd be able to help them. There are two different types of empathy. Thought empathy and feeling empathy. Thought empathy is where you paraphrase what another person is saying and put it in your own words. And then feeling empathy is where you acknowledge how the other person is probably feeling, based on what they said. Both are critical to understanding people better and therefore building more trust in our relationships. 

    As I've mentioned earlier, there are a lot of problems and challenges with the new communication methods of the new age. Challenges that didn't really exist prior to this. Something we can do to adapt to this new age is to be more conscious of how our messages are coming across. 

    But that's it for my blog this week. Hope you all enjoyed it and I'll talk to you guys' next time!