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A Lack of Forward Communication

In middle school, I was a pretty awkward kid. Any time I had to talk to someone other

than the people I knew closely, my heart would race, and I would have difficulty breathing. I had

a simple case of social anxiety. As a result, I barely had any friends, and spent most of my free

time in my room, either reading, playing video games, or watching anime. I noticed how sad my

life had become, and lived with a deep underlying feeling of anger and self-hate up until mid-

freshman year. A couple of my old friends decided to start playing Dungeons and Dragons. Over

time, I started interacting with more people, and new people that I did not know, and steadily,

my mental health improved. I noticed how strong the link between human interaction and mental

health really is. Talking with people helped me with my mental health issues and put me back on

track to being a healthy kid. Today, there is barely any face-to-face interaction in our society at

all, mostly due to the COVID-19 coronavirus, and teens’ claims for poor mental health have

increased dramatically since the start of the pandemic.

I chose this topic because I think that face-to-face communication is one of the most

important factors to leading a healthy life. Our generation is the most anxiety-prone and

depressed generation in history. Compared to the 1980’s, teenagers today are 74 percent more

likely to have trouble sleeping, and twice as many have seen a mental health specialist for their

issues (Blaszczak-Boxe). Our generation also spends much less time talking to people face-to-

face due to the creation of social media apps such as Instagram and Snapchat (Geladi). Recently,

the COVID-19 coronavirus has caused everybody to lower the quantity of face-to-face

interactions they have drastically. This has come at a cost to many people’s mental health. I

noticed that a lot of my friends got depressed and quality of life for many people just went down

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overall. The question I would like to answer looks at the clear correlation between face-to-face

communication and students’ mental health: What are the impacts of lack of face-to-face

communication on students’ lives?

Communication between people is a necessity for human life, as Niki Geladi of

DigitalSociety puts it, “Humans are made to form relationships since we have an innate longing

to share our lives with family, friends and partners” (Geladi). Being a social creature, humans

need to be around others in order to lead healthy lives, similarly to how some species of animals,

like guinea pigs can get depressed if not given enough attention or a cage-mate. Such a lack of

interpersonal communication can have serious consequences. In fact, most impacts of lack of

face-to-face communication between students are negative. Lack of face-to-face communication

can lead to people developing mental disorders. One of these disorders is depression. According

to Christopher Bergland of Psychology Today, “researchers found that having limited face-to-

face social contact nearly doubles someone's risk of having depression” (Bergland). Depression

can be caused by many things, and usually multiple factors play into someone being depressed.

Depression can lead to many difficulties in life and sometimes even suicide. Depression is a

chronic illness, and can persist for many years after it is first noticed in someone. Depression is

not the only effect that lack of face-to-face communication can have on someone. In a study

done by Anna Rabasco and Erin Sheets of Colby college, it was found that people who

completed a stress test called the e-Trier had significantly higher levels of stress than those who

took that same test in speech format (Rabasco, 60). The lack of communication experienced by

those who took the non-speech format of the e-Trier led to increased levels of stress. While stress

is necessary in human life, and can be an effective motivator for people to do things, it is

generally negative when in excess. According to the American Psychological Association,

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“experiencing stressors over a prolonged period of time, can result in a long-term drain on the

body” (Stress Effects on the Body). Stress can lead to anxiety, and chronic stress can lead to

heart disease, high blood pressure, and many other diseases. In the words of Neil Schneiderman,

Gail Ironson, and Scott D. Siegel in their article, STRESS AND HEALTH: Psychological,

Behavioral, and Biological Determinants:

Consequences of stress that could provide linkages to health have been identified, such as

increases in smoking, substance use, accidents, sleep problems, and eating disorders.

Populations that live in more stressful environments (communities with higher divorce

rates, business failures, natural disasters, etc.) smoke more heavily and experience higher

mortality from lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (Schniederman)

Severe stress can be reduced by increasing face-to-face communication. According to Maria

Cohut, Ph.D., of MedicalNewsToday, “Psychologist Susan Pinker states that direct person-to-

person contact triggers parts of our nervous system that release a “cocktail” of neurotransmitters

tasked with regulating our response to stress and anxiety. In other words, when we communicate

with people face-to-face, it could help to make us more resilient to stress factors in the long run”

(Cohut) A decrease in stress in a person’s life may make the difference between being miserable

and living normally. Lack of face-to-face communication can be extremely negative for the

human mind and body, and lead to many problems in someone’s lifetime. Problems like

depression, anxiety, and substance abuse are extremely common, especially among people in the

high-school age range, and all of these things have one thing in common: they can be the result

of a severe lack of face-to-face communication. While these problems are severe, not all the

effects of decreased interaction are negative.

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 While face-to-face communication is a necessity for living a normal life, lack of it is not

always detrimental to people. To some students, a decrease in communication may come as a

benefit rather than a detriment. This is especially obvious in people who are very introverted.

According to the website Psychology Today, in their article, Introversion:

Introverts do not fear or dislike others, and they are neither shy nor plagued by loneliness.

A crowded cocktail party may be torture for introverts, but they enjoy one-on-one

engagement in calm environments, which is more suited to the make-up of their nervous

system. Evidence suggests that, unlike with extroverts, the brains of introverts do not

react strongly to viewing novel human faces; in such situations they produce less

dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with reward (Introversion)

Due to their decreased dopamine production when viewing other humans, introverts may find

that having a relative lack of face-to-face communication can be calming. They may find social

interaction with other people to be draining and unnecessary. Think of an introvert’s capacity for

social interaction as a battery, which is depleted by social interaction, and through face-to-face

communication with others, can quickly lead to them becoming tired and irritable (Newman).

Most introverts can stand being around people for a little while, leaving their “battery” only

slightly drained after a day of interaction, but for some, an entire day of communicating with

others in person may leave them beyond exhausted, and possibly even stressed. According to

Lauren Dykovitz of Introvert Dear, “But introverts are the exact opposite. We crave — and

require — a lot of time with our thoughts. We need time to decompress and process things. We

don’t like running here, there, and everywhere and trying to visit multiple people in multiple

places in one day, because then we don’t get downtime” (Dykovitz). To an introvert, a night out

with friends at a crowded party may be suffocating. An introvert would definitely thrive better in

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a situation where they do not have to talk to others in person for extended periods of time, and

may find face-to-face communication to be unnecessary and tedious.

Introversion is just one of the ways that interaction can be detrimental, and there are

many more. For example, according to Sara Bean of Insight, “Efforts to improve collaboration

among employees by opening new lines of communication can have the opposite effect. Instead,

employees suffer from the modern workplace malady known as ‘communication overload,’ a

productivity-killing infirmity characterized by too many meaningless meetings...” (Bean). Too

much interaction can lead to decreased productivity, sort of like an overflow error. Too much

interaction can cause anyone to have difficulty being able to properly work. For students, this

could mean not being able to finish projects on time, being behind on homework, or even simply

failing important assignments. The amount of meaningless college ad e-mails and notifications

about school events that students get forces students to sift through thousands of meaningless

garbage to actually find e-mails that are important for them. It’s no problem to have to sift

through your e-mails every once in a while, and weed out the garbage, but having to do so every

time one opens their inbox is tedious and frustrating. Such a surplus of communication from

colleges and school executives leaves students with too much information. While lack of

communication is generally a negative thing, it can sometimes be the opposite. Inversely, too

much communication can also be detrimental.

For most people, face-to-face interactions are few and far between due to the current state

of the world, and meeting up with people safely can be problematic. Face-to-face communication

is important in people’s lives, and has decreased over the years. Since the start of the COVID-19

pandemic, people have stopped seeing each other, nearly to the point of not meeting with others

at all. Yvonne Taunton writes: “‘The most obvious changes are that most of us now have less

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face-to-face, in-person interaction with others, and when we are face to face, we are wearing

masks,’ Levine said. ‘We have less interaction overall with people outside of the people we live

with…’” (Taunton). Over the course of the pandemic, people have become less social, and more

defensive of their ideals and themselves, as seen with the recent surge in cancel culture. This

decrease in communication isn’t just a recent occurrence. The decline of face-to-face

communication has been prevalent in our society since before the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Maura Keller of Social Work Today, in her article, Social Media and Interpersonal

Communication,

Social media’s effect on our ability to interact and communicate is visible throughout all

areas of society, so what does this mean for interpersonal communication? According to

Paul Booth, PhD, an assistant professor of media and cinema studies in the College of

Communication at DePaul University in Chicago, social media certainly affects how we

engage with one another across all venues and ages. “There has been a shift in the way

we communicate; rather than face-to-face interaction, we’re tending to prefer mediated

communication,” (Keller, 10)

Technology has been an inhibitor of face-to-face communication since the first telephone was

created. Due to the changes in communication styles over the past few decades and innovations

in long-distance communication methods, while communication has increased, face-to-face

communication has been sort of rotated out for methods like texting and calling. According to

Jon Parker, support counselor at Northgate High School, “Electronic communication is a lot

more prevalent today, with methods of contacting others like texting and email rising

significantly to popularity in the last 30 or so years. When we talk electronically versus face-to-

face, we lose a lot of nuance. We lose tone and facial expressions, and communicating

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electronically may lead to miscommunication” (Parker). Miscommunication can lead to ruining

relationships with others, but more often it just makes some phrases simply non-understandable.

Things like sarcasm and tone, staples of face-to-face communication are completely unusable

when communicating digitally. Even so, most people today would choose to talk with someone

through e-mail or texting rather than actually meet up with them in person. However,

communication styles are not equal, and according to Hours Tv, “The use of shorter sentences

leads to less depth and meaning in conversations. When there is no face-to-face conversation, the

younger generation is not able to develop eye contact. Eye contact is an essential part of

developing effective communication skills.” (Decline of Communication Due to Technology).

Communicating face-to-face is important in developing skills that are necessary to lead a

successful life in today’s day and age. A child not knowing how to properly communicate with

others could prevent them from successfully participating in interviews, it could impair them

socially for the entirety of their lives. With the trending decline in face-to-face communication

and the current pandemic, it is important that people focus on staying together and attempting to

increase our total face-to-face time with friends and family.

Our society should strive towards increasing our communication with others, but due to

the current global situation, that is not possible for many people. While face-to-face

communication has declined, it is still an incredibly important thing to uphold. One may argue

that face-to-face communication is not important today because of the presence of new methods

of contacting other people, like cell phones and the internet, but face-to-face communication

increases the amount of dopamine in your body and it develops skills for people that are

indispensable for everyone who desires to lead a normal life. A lack of face-to-face

communication in your life could lead to increased stress, and drastically increased chances for

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depression. That being said, there are some benefits to decreased communication to some.

Introverts may find communicating with new people face-to-face draining and suffocating, and

try to steer clear of extended face-to-face interactions. Too much face-to-face time with others

could be detrimental to an introvert’s mental health and increase their stress significantly. Also,

too much interaction could lead to decreases in performance during work, due to overflow of

information. Despite all of this, while lack of communication may have some benefits for some

people, not communicating is vastly more detrimental to students, both in their academic and

social lives, than doing so normally.

Today, communication is greatly limited due to the current pandemic. According to

Tricia Jones of Klein College of Media and Communication, "because of COVID we're all being

pushed into an online existence” (Jones). While it is dangerous now, over time, face-to-face

communication may become more realistic and less prone to spreading disease. While our

situation now is far from perfect, there are already steps being taken to remedy the situation, with

the opening of some schools under a hybrid learning schedule, the opening of restaurants with

outdoor and socially distanced seating, and even the reopening of airports. However, the current

pandemic is not the only issue that face-to-face communication faces today. Technology, while

keeping us connected all across the world is reducing the quantity of face-to-face interactions

people have on a daily basis. A good solution to this today is not possible for one person to solve

for everyone, everyone has to solve this problem for themselves. Limiting usage of cellular and

internet-connected devices is the best way to increase face-to-face interaction, but it is something

everyone must do on an individual basis. Face-to-face communication is one of the most

important things in human nature, and at the rate it is declining, future generations may be even

more depressed and anxious than kids today.

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 Works Cited

Bean, Sara. “Too Much Information Is Leading to a Communications Overload for Many

Employees.” Workplace Insight, 24 Aug. 2017, workplaceinsight.net/too-much-

information-is-leading-to-a-communications-overload-for-

employees/#:~:text=Instead%2C%20employees%20suffer%20from%20the,of%20import

ance%2C%20context%20or%20urgency.

Bergland, Christopher. “Face-to-Face Social Contact Reduces Risk of Depression.” Psychology

Today, Sussex Publishers, 5 Oct. 2015, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-

way/201510/face-face-social-contact-reduces-risk-depression.

Blazczak-Boxe, Agata. “Americans More Depressed Now than Decades Ago.” CBS News, CBS

Interactive, 2 Oct. 2014, www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-more-depressed-now-than-

decades-ago/.

“Decline of Communication Due to Technology.” Hours TV, 8 Aug. 2017, Dykovitz, Lauren.

“There Is Such a Thing as Being Socially Exhausted.” IntrovertDear.com, 13 Dec. 2019,

introvertdear.com/news/there-is-such-a-thing-as-being-socially-exhausted/.

Geladi, Niki. “Technology Is Affecting the Quality of Human Face-to-Face Interaction.”

Medium, Digital Society, 21 May 2018, medium.com/digital-society/technology-is-

affecting-the-quality-of-human-face-to-face-interaction-146fe72a29c5.

“Introversion.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers,

www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/introversion.

Jones, Tricia. Interview. Conducted by Edirin Oputu, 16 September, 2020

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Keller, Maura. “Social Media and Interpersonal Communication.” Social Work Today, vol. 13,

no. 3, 2013.

Newman, Sarah. “Social Exhaustion: Avoiding Introvert Burnout.” Psych Central, Psych

Central, 12 Aug. 2015, psychcentral.com/blog/social-exhaustion-avoiding-introvert-

burnout#1.

Parker, Jon. Interview. Conducted by Andrew Shamardin, 27 April 2020.

Rabasco, Anna N., and Erin S. Sheets. “The Effects of Face-to-Face and Online Social Stress on

Emotion Identification” Modern Psychological Studies, vol. 22, no. 1, 2016.

Schneiderman, Neil, et al. “Stress and Health: Psychological, Behavioral, and Biological

Determinants.” Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, U.S. National Library of

Medicine, 2005, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2568977/.

“Stress Effects on the Body.” American Psychological Association, American Psychological

Association, 1 Nov. 2018, www.apa.org/topics/stress/body.

Taunton, Yvonne. “How Has COVID-19 Affected the Way We Communicate? - News.” UAB

News, 8 Sept. 2020, www.uab.edu/news/research/item/11542-how-has-covid-19-

affected-the-way-we-communicate.hourstv.com/decline-of-communication-due-

technology/

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 Works Consulted

“Depression.” National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human

Services, www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/depression/index.shtml.

Pedersen, Traci. “Mental Health May Benefit from Face-to-Face Social Contact – But Not

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contact-but-not-online#1.

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nger%20or%20meet%20a%20deadline.

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