Technology has completely transformed the way we experience love, intimacy and connection. How often do we text instead of talk, video chat instead of meet face-to-face, or share emoticons instead of actually articulate our feelings?
And what impact is this having on our relationships?
According to Larry Rosen, a professor of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, technology is distracting us from our real-world relationships:
“Our real and virtual worlds certainly overlap, as many of our virtual friends are also our real friends. But the time and effort we put into our virtual worlds limit the time to connect and especially to communicate on a deeper level in our real world. With smartphone in hand, we face a constant barrage of alerts, notifications, vibrations and beeps warning us that something seemingly important has happened and we must pay attention. We tap out brief missives and believe that we are being sociable, but as psychologist Sherry Turkle has so aptly said, we are only getting ‘sips’ of connection, not real communication.”
In the modern age, we are subjected to a barrage of apps and websites promising to connect us more closely. But according to psychologists, we’re superficially connecting on social media without developing intimate relationships.
For instance, one study found that while empathy can certainly be dispensed in the virtual world, it is only one-sixth as effective in making the recipient feel socially supported compared with empathy proffered in the world world. A hug feels six times more supportive than an emoji.
One of the major challenges is to communicate with love in the modern and digitally connected age. Yet how can we do this without rejecting modern communication methods?
Deborah Hefter and Mark Smith, two co-founders of Envelopments, have just shared their love story on Ideapod. In this video, they say how they fell in love by writing letters to each other while Hefter explains that the letters Smith sent to her while abroad created the foundation for their relationship and future marriage. It made all the difference.
She says that at the time, there was no better way to communicate love and intimacy than by sending letters. Smith explains that writing letters was how he shared his feelings of love over the challenges of time and space.
Now, we have largely conquered the challenges of time and space, but intimate communication has become a lost art. We are losing our opportunity to use communication technology in ways that are mindful which give presence to our moments of love and intimacy.
Hefter and Smith used Ideapod (a brilliant social network for idea sharing) to have a broader conversation about love and how we communicate our feelings of intimacy in the digital age. There’s a whole hashtag - #lovestory - with people sharing their own stories of love and how they communicate; and at this time of year, it’s a really positive, amazing and inspirational exploration of the different ways love can be communicated.
How is love part of your life? What ways do you use to communicate your feelings of love? What’s your love story?