I think my communication skills have stagnated, or even degraded, for the last two years. There are two reasons why my communication hasn’t improved.
The biggest reason is that I have been addicted to social media, mostly Instagram. Two years ago, I decided to log out of my Instagram to take a break. When I used Instagram, I contacted friends, even those who are unable to connect due to a geographic reason. I used to talk with them in the comment section or DM’s. Since I logged out of my Instagram account, I have lost some opportunities to talk with my friends. For instance, if my friends post about their birthday, I can talk to them with a celebratory comment and start asking them how they have been doing. This has made it harder to start talking with people because I couldn’t remember all of my friend’s birthdays. Logging out of social media could have made me feel better, mentally, but it made me feel that I shut out most of my connections with people. This is why I don’t feel that I have improved my communication skills because I left the community where I can have connections.
The second reason is that I became less active due to the pandemic. I communicate with my close friends both in the physical world and in virtual communities. However, since the pandemic has started, we still are not allowed to see each other in person as much as we did before. There’s no problem talking with my close friends, but this event has made me think that I don’t know how I can start talking to them in person. If I don’t see people for a long time, I sometimes forget how I interacted with them even if it’s close friends. Forgetting how to interact made me awkward when I started talking to them again. For this reason, I don’t think I have improved my communication skills both in physical and virtual communities for the last two years.
CMAT Blog 