How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
ABSTRACT
This reflection begins with a conversation between colleagues during a business trip in Asia, conducted without devices or interruption, which the author describes as a microcosm of eye contact, gesture and laughter. From that experience he examines the mode of communication that has become ordinary, in which speed is assumed, sharing is expected, and value is measured by approval, and argues that people were not made for it. He points to children addicted to internet consumption and to undergraduates suffering burnout and depression as indications. A second argument concerns who benefits: large companies profit from the lifetime and content users supply without payment, while governments attend more to their own financial returns than to the protection of their citizens. The author records that a colleague named this structural violence, and concludes that meeting people physically remains the most effective way of having a supporting impact on their lives.
KEYWORDS
Communication, social media, structural violence, personal contact, social competence, digital addiction, attention, media economy, responsibility, education, isolation, community
INTRODUCTION
Dear reader, please understand this short article as a critical reflection on our current situation, a situation that few of us may understand in full, and who are prepared to act accurately.
MAIN CORPUS
A meeting without screens
While being on a business trip in Asia, I had the fortunate possibility to meet and to sit down with two colleagues of mine. It was one of these moments beyond social media, phone conferences, short and voice messages. We got lost in time and created our own micro cosmos of eye contact and gestures, exchange thoughts and lots of laughter. What was going on? What was different from our widely accepted mode of communication? It was about us, being a group of like-minded persons having common and dissimilar points of view, and enjoying a creative and constructive discussion.
The communication we are offered
Media intents to make us believe that nowadays communication should be fast, via satellites and glass-fiber cables. More likely, that each information should be shared in order to be social, and should be noted and marked with a like as soon as it appears. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my strong belief that mankind was not made for this type of communication. The increasing number of addicted children to internet consumption is as dramatic as more and more bachelor students suffering burnouts and disillusion or even depressions at a very young age.
Who takes the benefit
I ask you to make up your mind and to take a step back in order to observe from another angle what is happening in our lives. Being end-users of media, huge companies make immense profits with the lifetime and the content that we offer them for free. Fear of missing information and data is raised in our unconsciousness and we are forced to constantly buy the latest mobile devices because of software updates, new applications, or predetermined breaking points of hardware.
Is this the life that we are looking for? Obviously, we are spending more time enriching others than we invest in our personal or professional development. If we are able to reject this information terrorism that is accepted and supported by our governments, only then we will be able to get control of our lives again and master our destiny. Too sad indeed, that it is a government that concentrates more on the financial turnover of their states, than on protecting and investing in the citizens. We are running the risk to impoverish more and more regarding both, education and social competence.
What is lost
The time that we invest in media is life capacity that we do not dedicate to breaking free of physical, mental, and spiritual slavery. And yes, the high-speed communication via video phone calls and networking makes us connect with people, but are you still trained in initiating small talk, in starting a conversation, or in making a person laugh? I am afraid we do not win with our current way of communicating, but that we miss far more, actually skills that we can’t even transfer to our children.
Structural violence
But getting back to the beginning, the group of my colleagues. One of my colleagues came up with the term of structural violence, and all of us agreed that this is what we are actually suffering. He did not want to miss the opportunity to make us reflect commonly on how we may resolve this dilemma. So, we spend even more hours on investigation and evaluation of reasonable strategies.
SUMMARY
The reflection moves from a particular experience to a claim of general reach, and the step between them is what holds the piece together. The conversation described at the outset was not remarkable for what was said but for what was absent from it, and that absence allows the author to identify by contrast what mediated communication has replaced: the face, the gesture, unmeasured time, shared laughter. From there the argument shifts the question from the individual to the structural. If the time we give these channels produces profit for those who run them, if the states that ought to protect us also take a return, and if the result is an educational and social impoverishment transmitted to the next generation, then this is not an unfortunate personal choice but an arrangement of the social order. That is precisely the sense of the term the author takes from the conversation itself rather than imposing from outside.
CONCLUSION
One thing is for sure, each of us is part of a complex social structure where we have responsibilities towards ourselves but also towards our environment. Getting in contact with them by meeting them physically is the best way to have a supporting impact on their lives. Exchanges on common and dissimilar points may form an endless value and may create true friendships and harmony.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The author’s diagnosis gains force once it is made precise what these systems actually capture, because the available responses depend on that precision.
What is captured is not principally time but attention, and it is captured by mechanisms designed for the purpose: the unpredictable reward, which is the reinforcement schedule most resistant to extinction; the absence of a natural stopping point in continuous scrolling; and permanent social comparison, whose effect on the mood of adolescents is documented with particular consistency among girls. Naming the mechanisms matters because each admits a different response, and because it allows the impoverishing use to be distinguished from the use that is not. The available evidence suggests that total screen time predicts little, that passive consumption predicts a good deal, and that active exchange with people one knows predicts almost nothing. The distinction confirms the author in the essentials and asks him for precision: it is not mediated connection that displaces the encounter, but a particular mode of it.
Three levels of response follow and they should not be confused. At the individual level, what works are measures that alter the arrangement of the environment rather than relying on willpower: removing the device from the room where one sleeps, disabling notifications, replacing one mediated meeting a week with a physical one. At the institutional level, schools and organisations can set rules that no individual can set alone, and several countries have now regulated the use of phones in classrooms with results that are beginning to be measured. At the regulatory level, where the author correctly locates the problem, instruments already exist: age appropriate design codes, limits on interface patterns that induce unintended decisions, and systemic risk assessment obligations for the largest platforms. That these instruments exist does not mean they suffice, and it does mean the situation described is not inevitable.
One qualification on the responsibility of governments, which the author raises with reason. A state that draws tax revenue from these companies while owing protection to its inhabitants faces a conflict of interest that is rarely declared, and that conflict explains better than negligence why regulation arrives late and arrives weak. Naming it resolves nothing by itself, and it directs the demand to the right place.
Finally, an observation from the field this journal serves. The author holds that social competences are being lost which cannot be transmitted to the next generation, and that concern translates directly into our work. Sustaining a difficult conversation, tolerating another person’s silence while they think, reading a face that does not match the words, remaining in a disagreement without abandoning it: these are the capacities on which all mediation rests, and they are acquired only by practising them. It is one more reason for what the author proposes at the end, which is not a theory but a practical instruction: meet, look at one another, and give the conversation the time it needs.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
FURTHER READING
Turkle, S. (2015). Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. Penguin Press, New York.
Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. PublicAffairs, New York.
Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2018). Associations between Screen Time and Lower Psychological Well-Being among Children and Adolescents. Preventive Medicine Reports, 12, 271 to 283.
Orben, A., & Przybylski, A. K. (2019). The Association between Adolescent Well-Being and Digital Technology Use. Nature Human Behaviour, 3, 173 to 182.
Verduyn, P., Ybarra, O., Résibois, M., Jonides, J., & Kross, E. (2017). Do Social Network Sites Enhance or Undermine Subjective Well-Being? Social Issues and Policy Review, 11(1), 274 to 302.
Kross, E., Verduyn, P., Demiralp, E., et al. (2013). Facebook Use Predicts Declines in Subjective Well-Being in Young Adults. PLoS ONE, 8(8).
Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 on a Single Market for Digital Services, in particular the provisions on systemic risk and the protection of minors.
World Health Organization (2019). Guidelines on Physical Activity, Sedentary Behaviour and Sleep for Children under 5 Years of Age, Geneva.
Very good article Daniel. I am interested in your comments about using virtual reality as one method of introducing people to mediation as I had mentioned in my article Mediation in Context.
In your article “About the Necessity to Meet in Person,” I agree wholeheartedly on the in-person face time sentiment. Backchannel communication not only fails to promote social interaction and tolerance, but also, if not carefully conveyed, opens room for misinterpretation especially when communicating through cross culture. Even between Canadians and Americans when both countries use English as the official language. E.g. our concept of being a “liberal” is different than our American counterparts. American’s liberal party is extreme left, while Canadian’s liberal party is the equivalent of the American’s Democrats. If not explained clearly, a lot of tension could be generated through backchannel communication. Since when was the last time an American will look up the Liberal’s principles before criticizing our Prime Minister for being too socialistic (and as if it is a bad thing)? This echoed your comment on “Facing the term, Peace” where the communication tool we used prior to social media and back channeling, we were able to observe the body language along with the others, get to take cue from the various cultural interaction (e.g. Japanese women will not likely star at you in the eyes when speaking). Communication via electronic medium that project a one dimension of technical culture and language that we are unable to experience have we interact at a human level.
Dear Louisa,
isn’t it fascinating to discover how language is used in different countries, cultures or nations? I believe it is highly important to critically analyze these potentials of misunderstandings in order to prevent conflict in a broader sense. When I speak to people I often explain that I speak German-English and that I use English words in a way my proper cultural programming indicates me to do. I do not believe that it is important for a global community to make use of one sterile prototype of English language. It might be more important to grant space for diversity within such an international group. It is a very easy task to double-check the deeper meaning of a sentence or a statement. So, a diverse use of English terms should not something to worry about but an indication regarding the quantity of diverse conceptions that life offers us to discover and to make use of.
Best regards, Daniel
The personal touch is of paramount importance. Sticking to remote communication through (machines) will make us part of the machinery system rather than the human personal system..
No doubt we need both, however, always the personal touch and the body language are of great deeper effects..
Regards
Dear Abdel,
thank you for your thoughts. Yes, I think so too – we need both. Basically, I would say it is a question of finding a personal balance between online and offline communication. Such a balance may provide a state of harmony within the social environment of the individual – for example the proper family. Many times I witness families being on vacation and each one is totally disconnected from the rest. Heads down, lost in the infinitive world of the world wide web. This is a crucial point as obviously two issues come together. First, people are distracted and do not pay attention to persons who are available for offline communication, and second, online communication or engagement is realized at the same point, with all its risks of creating misunderstandings. I believe that we talk about two potential fields of conflict. What do you think?
Best regards, Daniel
There is no doubt that meeting in person is essential, we must understand that a new dimension has been created and that we must operate and communicate online as well. In the context of conflict resolution, using online communication could help us complement the “offline” dialogue and contribute to power asymmetry, ongoing communication and even provide us with a new method of monitoring and evaluation.
Dear Arik,
yes, our current communication concept and the proper understanding of what communication is, underlies drastic changes. But such changes are not mandatorily of negative nature. I believe the key to an effective use of new communication channels is the personal ability to integrate it to what was done in the past. Even though, we take as an example an offline and face-to-face dialogue between two persons, the basic ability to use mobile devices in order to additionally visualize the content or specific parts of it, may enrich and foster both person’s understanding. Far more complex and difficult the situation becomes if communication is done in a full online modus. Here, a responsible communication partner must be well known to the other party in order to prevent misunderstanding. If both parties do not know each other previously, the prevention of misunderstanding might require a very detailed manner exchanging information. This could become a very time-consuming aspect.
While traveling, I have the possibility to witness people texting each other for hours. I think that a simply phone call could bring the communication to a matching end within one minute. What do you think? And what are your experiences when you teach such content within the field of Conntix ?
BR, Daniel
Neuroscience teaches us that our brain retains information through the five senses and one of them is touch. Many kids in America have been diagnosed with ADHD or ADD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). According to the National Survey of Children’s Health, 10% of kids, that is about 6.1 million children from 4 – 17 have differences in brain development and brain activity affecting attention, the ability to sit still, and self-control. Clearly the technology has been blamed by many health institutions and is now being warned by hospitals.
The situation with the connectivity with the world has indeed make the world more connected, yet more conflicts have arisen by mental health issues in America alone. The sense of community is slowly disappearing. As we urge to make such connections as this article mentions, by equipping ourselves with better gadgets, the simplicity of neighbor to neighbor relationship is becoming more difficult. As I am replying to this great article, I am indeed thankful for technology, yet I do hope we create and/or help creating 5 senses type of environments. I am convinced that in such way, statistics can lessen the number of mental health incidents in children whom will create new relationships tomorrow.
Dear Thalia,
thank you for your thoughts and the time that you invested for sharing your expertise. I had the possibility to teach Life Skills at a local primary school. Even though we may hear many stories of children being diagnosed with ADHD and ADD, it was a breath taking experience to see myself being involved in such class dynamics. Due to the topic that I taught the children of age 5 to 12, we had lots of time to talk about each other’s social behaviors, experiences in life, and expectations of what future might bring.
Sometimes the classes showed up to 80 % of the children with serious ADHD or ADD syndromes. I gathered the information that I got from our conversations and I identified three components that repeated themselves in the individual social familiar cases of the children:
1) a serious lack of social connectivity within the proper family, what means that these children did not receive any type of emotional support or social attention,
2) a non supportive concept of alimentation, that showed a total hyperglycemic consume,
3) a high-end media addiction that included television, cellphone, online games.
Personally, I was shocked when I realized that these young creatures are the new target group of our consumer’s society, being attacked by commercials and industry taking away all the youthful enthusiasm that children need to properly develop. Summing it us – yes, the ADHD or ADD diagnosed children needed a lot of attention but mainly a helping hand of a friend who looked them in the eyes, offered them patience, and gave them space for a conversation.
I wish them all only the best, Daniel Erdmann
Dear Daniel,
This has been an amazing experience you have obtained. I am surprised at the results of your gathered information from the conversations with these children.
I can only feel more encouraged to keep working on the understanding for molding minds. Such individuals need a huge support. It would be great to keep track of your students ten – fifteen years from now. Thank you so much for sharing your story!
Thalia
Dear Thalia,
yes, you are right. It was an outstanding experience. And yes, it would be great to see the development of these students. Due to the fact that this was a local area with a very high unemployment cipher, there are lots of difficulties and challenges in the way of such children. From my perspective, the proper development of the kids would need a mandatory and binding supervision by a social worker. Apart of that, lots of groundwork in the families has to be done.
I am still dreaming of a specific educational program that young adults have to go through, best at an early stage of pregnancy. This course should deliver a fundamental knowledge on how to socialize a kid, how to properly nourish a baby, etc. Maybe something like this could be called ‘Parent’s License’. To me, it sometimes look like people are not aware of the fact that raising a child is connected to many obligations and restrictions. The setting of the partnership totally changes, two become three or more. That means that a family is born and such a family bears new rules within.
Best regards, Daniel
I totally agree that symposium is a good platform to connect people. Exchanging ideas face to face truly help in building friendships. In today’s world, people opt technology as media to touch base. Virtual media such as Skype and WebEx creates an illusion in people that they are effectively involved in meetings, but I feel that people are indeed compromising the power of attraction that evolves from an in-person meeting.
Personally, I prefer holding meetings with my clients and having a direct encounter with them in collecting information concerning the matter rather than getting it in written mode. While considering the written instructions from clients, I have to say that there were situations which reminded me of the idiomatic antithesis, “the letter and spirit of the law”. I have often got confused whether to take the literal interpretation of the words or their intent. Ultimately, clarifications are made by scheduling meetings.
It’s a fact that true approaches of people are embedded in their body language and the environment created during the meetings, symposiums and social gatherings speak volumes. Whatever said and done, the truth that the latest technology allows us to communicate with others more conveniently and spontaneously cannot be denied as well.
Dear Sherina,
thank you very much for your thoughts. I totally confirm that there is no way to substitute the personal meeting in real life. It is funny that I even had to add to this sentence the specification of ‘real life’ – as media nowadays intents to make us accept that virtual meetings are personal meetings. And yes, meeting a person offers a much wider spectrum of understanding. The verbal exchange of information finds itself in conjunction with body language and many other details that would be totally lost in a virtual way.
I think we should be mindful to NOT accept virtual communication too much in our lives. I am afraid of the day when nobody remembers the socio-emotional benefits of meeting up – face to face.
Best regards, Daniel Erdmann