Hierachy of Communication

This is sort of a follow up to my last post, in that it is also about human interaction from an introvert's perspective. However, instead of focusing solely on face to face interactions, I will now be addressing some other forms of communication and comparing them with each other. I will go through them in the order of what I perceive to be the most difficult to the easiest level. I call it the hierachy of communication.What I mean by difficulty here is not the speed or efficiency of the particular form of communication, but how easy it is for someone like me to engage in it without experiencing social anxiety. Obviously face to face communication is what I find to be the most challenging, but since I've covered that already let's move on to the second level of communication: conversing on the phone.

There are two reasons why I find talking on the phone to be easier than talking in person. The big one is that when you're on the phone, the only source of stimuli you need to pay attention to is the voice of the other person. No deciphering facial cues, no body language, and no need to maintain awkward periods of eye contact. Of course, even with just a voice, you still have to pay attention to the person's inflections and converse with them at the same speed as you would in person, but it's definitely an improvement from a face to face encounter. The second and perhaps not so pleasant reason is the fact that you can end the conversation anytime you want. I'm sure we've all had our share of telemarketer calls, and doesn't it feel great to just slam that phone (or pressing that end call button) on them and be done with it? If you were approached by those same people in person, it can be a little harder to shake them off of you. If it was a more important call, say from a friend or family member, and you just have to end the call for some reason (e.g. you need to get back to work or you just don't feel like talking) but you don't want to hurt their feelings and all that, you can pretty much make up any number of excuses to get yourself out of there and they wouldn't be able to call you on it (no pun intended).

The third level is messaging. This type of communication is rather broad and includes phone and Facebook messaging, Skype, WhatsApp etc., but you get the idea. This is basically my favorite form of communication, and where I feel most comfortable communicating. The main reason for my preference is the time factor. When people message each other, they generally understand the case to be that the other person will reply in a relatively short amount of time. But as we all know, this 'relatively' is really quite broad in that it is up to the other person's discretion to decide when he or she will reply. Because there's no real demand for an immediate response like in the first two levels, some people will reply in seconds, while others will take half a day or even longer to respond; it all depends on the person and the context. And also due to this lack of pressure to reply right away, we are given the opportunity to choose our words more carefully before replying; naturally, this is something which I take full advantage of. Because of this, a lot of people feel like I am more talkative online than in person. And this might actually be true, but it is only because when I don't talk in person, I am given the time to absorb what the other person has said, collect my own thoughts, and find the proper words to express them without having to feel the pressure of those long, awkward pauses in between.

The fourth and last level of communication I want to address is in the form of emails/letters. I'm sure that there are still people out there who write, I mean literally write, letters, and I applaud them for it; but I'm not one of those people, so I'm pretty much focusing on emails here. Emails are just fine for me, and the only issue I have with this form of communicating is that a lot of times it takes even longer to receive a response than from the slowest messaging people...it's just not that efficient. On the plus side, you can put in a much larger amount of text and information than you can in mere messages (technically you can do so with messages as well, but nobody really likes reading a paragraph's worth of messages or more). Emails are also great as a more formal means of communication. I really don't have much else to say about them...sorry about that.

Thanks to a comment I've received on this post, I realize that it sounds like I'm solely advocating for indirect communication, but of course that's not the case. I'm merely voicing my opinion about my own preferences for communicating. The thing is, there is a trade-off with these other forms of communication. One one hand, they take away the unwanted pressure of face to face talk, but on the other, they also rob us of the rich and complex interactions that come with that. So the trick is to find a healthy balance between them.