Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Communication – a lost art

By: Susan Finco, President, Leonard & Finco Public Relations


For those of us who truly love good communication, let’s pause a moment and mourn the loss of a way of life. I know a lot of you will say, “What are you talking about?!?! We do nothing BUT communicate with one another these days. People are on their phones, they’re texting, posting and yes, we even occasionally email one another.” That’s my point exactly.

Sure we are in touch with one another more than ever before, but very little of it is actually communicating. Call it message trading. Or headline writing. This realization hit me when I was attempting to get in touch with a good friend to see how she was doing , chat a bit and to set up a time to get together. I called and left a voice mail (because she never answers her phone). Instead of calling me back, she texted: “O.K. New pics FB. Dinner Sunday?” This lead to a series of two word exchanges. In the end, we set up a dinner, but I really didn’t know how she was doing. And the photos on Facebook didn’t answer the question either.

Once we got together, we actually communicated with one another like the longtime friends that we are. In thinking about it, it occurred to me that this is pretty typical for just about everyone I know. We text, we post, we Tweet, we email, we leave voice messages, but rarely do we talk or truly communicate unless we are actually in front of one another. Of course, in some cases, even when we’re face to face, we’re still spending time texting or posting. We’re just throwing out bits and pieces of information and leaving others to connect the dots.

Don’t get me wrong, I love social media; but now and then, I long for a good old-fashion conversation.  How about you?

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