Communicating in person, face-to-face, has been our normal way of sharing for millennia - the advent of technology has only really come to play relatively recently in the grand scheme of things. We can all have certain preferences for how we communicate with other people (and I definitely have certain contacts firmly in the email zone, I’m not a fan of phone conversations also) - we have to acknowledge that as a rule, we can lose certain social skills the more we shy away from those face-to-face interactions. The past year has been a difficult one in many ways. In the part of the world I inhabit, I have had similar conversations with friends and neighbors - while many seem to be excited at the prospect of public life opening up again and things returning to “as normal as they can be”, there is a core who are nervous. Behind the optimism that people feel they SHOULD have, is a niggle of fear. How do we interact in person? What if I don’t actually like being around lots of people, or going back to the same routines? What if (whispers) I actually LIKED the removal of some social expectations and dread going back to them?

This opens a large conversation about our lifestyle, one which we all need to have.

On a cognitive level, we are built to interpret the words, actions and behavior or others - all together, they help us work one another out and provide context and meaning. When we speak face-to-face our brains can synchronize and begin to coordinate reaction. Scientists have examined different forms of communication and found that this only happens when we look each other in the eye and in person.

Even though the ways we can communicate nowadays are helpful, they cannot replicate the closeness and tight bonds created by being physically with each other. We instinctively process the vast majority of behavioral cues without realizing we’re doing it (I acknowledge this is mostly true from a position of neurotypical privilege), but we won’t experience them or learn about them if we don’t spend in-person time with others.

The curse of anonymity

Back to social media - when we decide to comment on a post or other form of social media anonymously, we are circumventing what makes us human communicators. We are mostly engineered to respect social mores and interact respectfully, but with anonymity, that gets pushed aside. Speaking anonymously, we are more likely to disclose information into the public forum that we shouldn’t, and are also more likely to be tricked or to use hateful and bigoted speech.

Instead of being fully us, we can tweak, change and edit who we are, presenting and communicating a false version of ourselves.

Life can be messy, communicating with each other can be hard, being with others can sometimes be challenging.

But with all of its quirks, HUMANITY IS GLORIOUS.