Have you ever wondered why there is often so much conflict on Facebook? It’s been bothering me lately…
I got to thinking about writing as a communication method. Most people grow up speaking to communicate. We spend thousands of hours doing it in our native tongue. Learning the nuances, the slang, the subtext. In fact, all through school I remember how much people complained about writing. It was hard. It was awkward. It was different. Why can’t we just do oral reports? I have a degree in writing, and I STILL complained about some writing assignments!
So now throw people into a situation where their primary method of social interaction is in writing.
They have to communicate all that subtlety of thought, facial expression, emotion, etc. But they don’t get to use their faces or voices to do it. They get two dozen emoji to help them get across emotional states and that’s about it.
As someone who has spent hundreds of hours writing, I still find written communication fraught with the dangers of misunderstanding. When I try to share strong emotions I have to be very intentional about each word to make sure I’m not overstating, or being unintentionally offensive or whiny.
Likewise, when responding to another person’s comment about a difficult time in their life, what may be a tongue in cheek, “buck up old boy!” from me, instead becomes a dismissive brush off and the start of flame wars on FB.
So what do we do? Social interaction face to face seems to be dwindling. Lost in the busyness of our lives. If that isn’t going to change, then there must be some way to mitigate the potential fracturing of relationships that seems so rampant on Facebook.
As with most of my posts, I don’t have answers. Just questions.
So here’s my question: what if we simply assumed that every human on Facebook meant their comment for the best?
Or at least, that they are doing the best they can at writing and it’s difficult to communicate clearly that way, so maybe it was a simple misunderstanding.
In short, why don’t we give people the same benefit of the doubt on social media that we would if we were face to face?
Let’s put out the flames rather than assuming them into existence. Everyone wants to connect, and no one likes being burned.