Intercultural Communication

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Is Technology Ruining Our Ability to Read Emotions? Study Says Yes

We've all heard it before, "Kids don't know grammar anymore because all they do is text," or "Today's generation misses everything going on around them because they're staring at their phones." But a recent research study by UCLA warns the damage of too much screen time may be even worse than many of us imagined . The study, which will be published in the October 2014 issues of Computers in Human Behavior, found that digital media decreased children's ability to read other people's emotions.

The researchers provided sixth grade students with a pre-test to establish their baseline abilities to read emotions. The students were shown photographs and videotaped scenes where the audio was silenced. The participants were then asked to infer people's emotional states based on facial expressions and non-verbal cues.

Half the students were then sent away to a camp where they lacked access to digital media. They spent their time doing traditional camp activities - hiking, archery, and learning about nature. The control group went about their daily activity as usual including their normal access to digital media (which for these students averaged about four and a half hours on the typical school day).

After five days, both groups participated in a post-test. The kids who went to camp showed significant improvements in their abilities to recognize emotions. The control group only showed a slight improvement. The authors concluded that the increased face-to-face interaction improved the campers' social skills.

What Could This Mean for Adults?

Although the participants in the study were children, that doesn't necessarily mean adults are immune to declining social skills. After all, the participants in the study were sixth grade students - probably between the ages of 11 and 13. We're not talking about preschoolers who are just learning about emotions. These are pre-teens who should already understand the basics about feelings and should already possess a certain amount of sophisticated social skills.

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Could too much time behind a screen interfere with adults' ability to recognize emotions? I think it can. After all, social skills are like other skills in life. You have to practice them to get better. And when our faces are buried in our phones and the majority of our conversations take place behind a screen, it's bound to have some impact on our ability to socialize in-person effectively.