[minusthebrandon]

My parents struggling with e-mail is no way the same thing as lacking social skills. That just seems a lack of technology skills.

My point was that saying Snapchat or social media leads to greater social skills than what previous generations had is very hard for me to believe.

[jjk166]

Tomato tomato

You can communicate via a method your parents can't because you used it extensively in your prime while they didn't. Your grandparents probably had the same issue with fax machines and your grandchildren will probably have the same problem with neural-messaging. Every generation thinks "but this time it's different" and every generation is wrong.

[minusthebrandon]

I will still say that lacking the ability to communicate via a particular medium is not the same as lacking social skills. My inability to send messages via Morse code over telegraph lines doesn't mean that I lack social skills.

[jjk166]

So if a skilled telegraph operator handed you a message including the word "naloopen" you would know what that means? There was not just one but several forms of telegraphese developed. A conversation held entirely in brief dots and dashes has a substantially different flow to it than say typing out a message on an internet forum, which in turn is nothing like how one would communicate with a 5 second fleeting video recording. A telegraph is a very simple machine to operate, I'm sure you could learn quickly, but you would certainly still lack the social skills necessary to keep up with a professional telegraph operator from a century ago.

Likewise, your parents certainly don't have any problem conceptually understanding keyboards, letters, or addresses - they were perfectly comfortable with typewriters, letterheads, and postal codes. Dealing with nigerian princes and chain mail might involve the use of technology, but these are very much social skills.

As someone who only uses social media platforms that are mildly reskinned versions of 80s/90s message forums, I don't really know what the "BCC vs CC" of tiktok is, nor do I care. I have an excellent understanding of how tiktok works technologically, but I lack the particular social skills tiktok requires. Since my peers do not get it either, this has never been a problem for me, but I'm sure in a few years when my kids expect me to just know how to snapple into the televoid with them that I'll look like an idiot as I search for a reply button somehwere.

[minusthebrandon]

Once again... not knowing how to communicate via a particular medium does not equate to a lack of social skills.

To your point, if a telegraph operator handed me a message I didn't understand, I could just say, "Hey, I don't understand this message. Can you explain it to me?" because that is social skills.

[jjk166]

And if someone at the bar buys you a drink and you're not totally sure why, you can go over to them and say "Hey, I don't understand this message. Can you explain it to me?" You posses the social skill to ask for clarification, you lack the social skill of flirting.

That I can have someone translate to and from Urdu for me does not mean I have the social skill required to communicate via Urdu. Likewise, that your parents can ask you whether something is spam or not doesn't mean they have the social skill required to communicate via email.

Wikipedia defines social skills as:

"A social skill is any competence facilitating interaction and communication with others where social rules and relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways."

If the ability to effectively communicate via a medium doesn't satisfy that definition, what does? You are welcome to use a different definition, but that's what I am referring to by social skills.

[minusthebrandon]

Flirting and speaking a foreign language are a false equivalence to not knowing how to e-mail or use social media.

Whether using your definition or another, my point still stands that social media does not lead to GREATER social skills than previous generations possessed.

Not being skilled in ALL aspects of socialization isn't the same thing as lacking social skills in general.

[jancsika]

Nobody ever ended up going down a "Fax" rabbit-hole, or becoming depressed because they spend an hour before bed each night compulsively faxing.

[jjk166]

How many people sent a fax to a tow truck when they got in an accident? How many people met their future spouse faxing?

Conversely, how many people have been scammed out of their life savings by nigerian princes? How many people developed a poor work life balance as they could now do work from home any time?

I'm not going to argue that smart phones have no issues, but everything that came before had issues too, and all were abandoned when something better came along.