ETSU is getting together with Ballad Health for their second event in the Resilience Town Series.
The topic of the event is “Before You Hit Send: Conversations about Resilient Electronic Communication,” which will be discussing the mental health behind good electronic communication as well as the negative effects that bad communication can have, especially the impact that it can have on college students and young adults.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic has put life on hold for many people, we have been forced to use electronic communication more frequently in order to keep up with family, friends and work.
Electronic communication has become the most practical way to keep up with life outside of the immediate home, while keeping civilians safe from spreading sickness outside of their household.
As with anything, there are pros and cons to each method of communication. With the increase of electronic communication also comes an increase of miscommunication. Without body language to give context to the meaning behind words, people are finding themselves more frustrated with mixed signals from things such as social media posts, texts and emails.
Political and religious posts on social media are one of the most common examples of this, in that they tend to get a reaction out of people who will express their opinions via the comments section.
This method of expressing opinions is rarely effective. It will simply make the people reading and writing the comments angry on opposite sides of the screen and generally have no effect on the mindset of the opposite party.
A healthy alternative to this is to not start arguments online or in text. Constantly texting back and forth can dehumanize the person you are talking to because you cannot see the person you are speaking with, and it takes less time and emotional investment to keep up with the conversation rather than if the conversation was occurring via phone or video call.
