“I got tired of so much gif and I considered communication lost,” says Eugenio R., a 42-year-old graphic designer who met a 31-year-old man on Instagram. Although the dates were going well, problems arose when digital communication came into play. “When we started, I only sent gifs that I had to decipher. At first I thought it was funny, but after a while I lost connection and interest,” he says.
They are not only gifs and the stickers those that reveal the age of the person sending them, but also the communication formulas used, since each generation faces the communication channels in a different way. This is what the study reveals (The Silent Generation: Millennial Phone Call Statistics)which reveals that 75% of respondents born between 1981 and 1996 feel that receiving a call represents an intrusion into daily life that consumes excessive time. That is why they are known as the silent generation. Meanwhile, the boomers They value phone calls and 61% of members of Generation Z, as noted, prefer messages written on WhatsApp over calls.
These differences would not be particularly striking if it were not for the fact that intergenerational relationships, as the dating application Bumble points out, are increasingly common. For 63% of users, age is not a determining factor when dating someone. 35% of women say they have become less critical in the last year of relationships in which there are age differences and almost more than half of the men surveyed would be open to dating someone up to seven years older than them. Everything in order… until it’s time to communicate.
don’t call me
Los millennials They prefer the use of asynchronous applications (that is, they do not require immediate interaction, as a telephone conversation does), because they find it a more comfortable and less intrusive form of communication. “Although it is not a generation that was born with the tablet under the arm, she is oriented towards productivity and that is why she has had to learn to manage time well, so asynchronous communication helps her manage which messages she responds to and when,” Entic Soler, relational psychologist and collaborating professor, explains to ICON. from the Psychology and Educational Sciences Studies of the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). “This way you can write them with more time and review them, something that also happens with audios. This fosters a lack of confidence in communication skills. In traditional communication, such as telephone communication, what is said is said for the first time and is taken for granted from the first moment.”
Soler believes that communication problems that may arise between different generations are solved, precisely, with more communication. “As there is a different relationship with digital communication systems, an agreement must be reached. There is a premise of communication that says that it is impossible not to communicate, because even any silence communicates. But the recipient of the silence can interpret it in a biased way. Depending on how we use certain systems to communicate, we can get into biases, it even happens with those who write paragraphs having a partner who responds with a mere gif. These differences must be put on the table and the ideal formulas for communication must be agreed upon, just as the communication channels to be used must be agreed upon,” he warns.
Miguel Ángel del Corral Domínguez, an expert in linguistics and communication, considers that the content of the conversations themselves can have great weight because, in the case of large generational differences, they may not share the same experiential, vital or cultural references. “The linguistic differences are not excessively profound unless we leave at very different ages in the relationship. Today people in their thirties, at least in the family and therefore sentimental sphere, use many colloquialisms and terms typical of youth, except in the case of typically adolescent slang,” he says. In fact, the popularization of social networks has not created a kind of secret language among young people, but rather has popularized it: when a teenage video or phrase goes viral, it reaches users who may be twice or triple their age.
The squid game without subtitles
The series humorously reflects the immense differences that exist when it comes to communicating between different generations. “It’s like I’m seeing The squid game without subtitles”, when he hears the characters of Selena Gómez and Zoe Colletti speak. “It’s really interesting to see how different people, of different ages and periods, use language on the Internet. There is a misperception that if people use language differently, one of them must be right, but that is not true. There is no correct way to use language when we speak through digital media and channels. “We can use language differently, and it can actually help us understand each other better,” author of Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language (Riverhead Books, 2020). “Everyone can express themselves however they want, but it is necessary to establish some bases to avoid communication difficulties and misinterpretations,” he says.
“My boyfriend calls me every day, but I don’t know what to tell him. Do I tell him I went to the office, had a couple of horrible meetings, and am going to the grocery store? I don’t understand this habit of talking for the sake of talking. The few times that I am the one who calls, it is for something relatively important or at least entertaining, and I ask him beforehand on WhatsApp if the call is going well, because I hate answering the phone when I am having something with my friends, if I am in in the middle of dinner or on the couch watching Netflix and I have to stop a series to listen to some story from their day that is not going to change mine. Of course: few things come to mind worse than a video call without prior notice,” confesses Clara R., brand manager 37 years old whose partner is 49.
“All the inconveniences that a call poses are aggravated in video calls, which force them to show themselves live, without filters, seeing themselves with all their possible defects amplified and in view of the other participants”, , professor of Studies of Information and Communication Sciences. “Anxiety is mathematical: the higher the perception of the threat of loss of time and the lower the perception of our own resources to cope with it, the higher the anticipatory anxiety of the situation will be,” says the psychologist.
“With regard to the use of emoticons or stickers“, happens as with the content: it depends on the degree of trust or familiarity with our interlocutor,” explains Miguel Ángel del Corral Domínguez. “In the case of a couple, it is presumed high. Now, you have to be careful due to the lack of knowledge of the code on the part of the interlocutor, something common in older people. Although this is not something that is limited only to that visual code: let’s think about irony or sarcasm.” “There is an obvious generation gap and you try to update yourself so as not to become outdated or so that it is not seen that you do not understand what is happening,” summarizes Eugenio R. “In the end it becomes a game that can be a little confusing, since the sticker You can interpret it one way and the person who sends it to you another way.” He confesses that he stopped seeing the 31-year-old man whom he had met through social networks, but from time to time he sends him… more gifs. What does it mean? That question has, like language itself, too many answers.
