Your say / Society
Put down your phones and learn to talk again
Even the Pope is getting a bit fed up. In his recent annual message for the Catholic Church’s World Day of Communications he urged families to put aside smart phones and social media feeds and learn to talk to one another again.
We are surrounded by a cacophony of verbal and visual conversations. Many of them meaningless. Many of them filling up what some of us see as a ‘void’ of silence. But as Pope Francis quoted from his predecessor in the same address: “Silence is an integral element of communication; in its absence words rich in content cannot exist.”
Our brains, like everything other part of our body, need time to rest, recover, repair. They need time to absorb and process information, not become a bulging repository for insignificant trivia. As fast as we are deleting the filing cabinets, they are filling up again, like an never ending conversation looping over and over itself.
is needed now More than ever
Disturbingly, much of what is online is insidious too. Not just the very open and blatant trolling on Twitter, but increasingly in the ‘below the line’ comments on online articles. People with too much time on their hands feel obliged to make often snidey remarks about subjects and people they know little about and under convenient pseudonyms. Often these are just angry people, looking for an easy outlet for their frustrations, ready to have a pop at pretty much anything.
One of the most valuable pieces of advice I was given, applicable both in business and personally, was to take time to talk to people – and to listen. Pretty much everything else can wait. Someone may need to get something off their chest, talk through a complex challenge, get a second opinion or just express their fears and doubts and want to be reassured. We need human contact, we need to be able to look someone in the eye, to read their expression and their body language. So much of that nuance is lost in a virtual conversation.
I’d like talking face to face, listening and silence to become the the most valuable commodities on the Communications Exchange. Let them become the new tulip bulb, the gold bar, the most sought after stock. In fact, maybe we can’t put a price on them at all.
Karen White is Vice Chair of the Bristol branch of the Institute of Directors. Follow her on Twitter at @karenwhite03
Image: Shutterstock
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