Living in an era where social media wildly dominates over 4 to 6 hours of your daily life are not cut out for everyone. Pinning your face into the screen impulsively can somehow be excruciating after a while. Dull without familiar voice, and becomes an unwanted gesture memory.
I was feeling nostalgic on the days where all texts-based communication inventions was very much minimal. Owning a house phone, calling your friend from a really big and bulky, or the flip cellular phone, longing for that actual meaning of voice conversation, not emojis.
Talk about the numbers of voice calls
Discovering the rate of the adults (18+) spent on social media and internet according to Nielsen Company, up to this year, is 5.5 hours per day (2017 data), was enough as a reflection. Back in 2008, Nielsen researched that texting also supplanting voice calls, their reasons are categorical, 22% say SMS is easier than a phone call, and another 20% say it’s faster.
Voice usage has been decreased by 14% among teens and is continuing to diminish in all age groups under 55. This is all came from a decade ago, devastating or sophisticated?
Not only that the number of suicidal behavior are rising, but more statistics are also shown on how egocentric our society had become. There is a huge deal of interpersonal communication deprivation that linked with the results, in other words ; loneliness.
According to www.worldpopulationreview.com, the top five countries of suicidal numbers around the world in 2018 are high in countries with huge concern on poverty level such as; Sri Lanka (35.3 suicides per 100k), or the eastern European country of Lithuania (32.7 suicides per 100k).
Mental health challenges
There are statistics portraying how loneliness can trigger an individual to a certain edge of mood episodes and depression.
It doesn’t always have to be a psychotic situation. Anyone can experienced loneliness in this endless spiral of a social-digital labyrinth. Calling your friend, family or colleagues strangely considered to be a waste of time, energy and your phone credit balance.
As busy as some people seem to be, many of them are discreetly lurking for attention and searching it in the wrong places. Some didn’t seem to realize that there is just this missing feeling in their life. A part of them that seems to be out of touch.
The substitute of social media life-bragging, so-called-important quote on your photo caption or self love posts didn’t provide the adequate answer.
Your nerves want to hang out too
Barbara Frederickson, Professor of Psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill wrote in a New York Times article, that when you share a smile or laugh face to face with someone, a discernible synchrony emerges between you. Your gestures and biochemistry, even your respective neural firings, come to mirror each other. It’s micro-moments like these, in which a wave of good feelings rolls through two brains and body at once, that build your capacity to empathize as well as to improve your health.
To make this into a scientific measure, we have to know that our brain is connected to our heart by a vagus nerve. From here, we would find an important part of our anatomy called Vagal Tone.
Picture source from www.iamheart.org.
Vagal tone created by an act of the vagus nerve, a fundamental component of the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. The higher your vagal tone the better. It means your body has better capability to regulate the internal systems that keep you healthy. Systems such as cardiovascular, glucose and immune responses.
Behavioral neuroscientist, Stephen Porges has shown that vagal tone is one of the things that responsible for certain nerves activity. These activities also consist of facial expressivity and the ability to tune in to the frequency of the human voice. By increasing people’s vagal tone, we increase their capacity for connection, friendship, and empathy. In short, the more attuned to others you become, the healthier you’ll be, and vice versa.
This mutual influence also explains, how a lack of positive social contact, can decrease the ability of biological response to interactions.
Using voice instead of texts on your phones
Isn’t it ironic that the basic thing your device supposed to do,is the least of what they are actually doing?
So use your phone to call the people you miss the most. Unravel the mystery of what is holding you back from voice interactions. Either now or you’ll just going to go slump into texting, pressing insignificant like-buttons, empty-hearted selfies, or stalking a stranger’s timeline. When all you need is to hear actual familiarity one dial away.
Kill that loneliness, because most likely this is nothing but a hesitation caused by a trend.
Author: Fraya
A writer and entrepreneur with profound interest in humankind research and insights. An avid coffee drinker and book hoarder. Hours and days spent in Jakarta.
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