Pros and cons of virtual communication

With the development of computer technology and the advent of the World Wide Web, communication between people has undergone major changes and flowed into a new dimension - the virtual. Now, having access to the Internet, you can easily and quickly establish contact with a person from anywhere on the planet, get to know the person you like in a couple of seconds, or talk with friends living far away without leaving the couch.

However, virtual communication seems to be an unconditional blessing only at first glance. In fact, this phenomenon has both advantages and significant disadvantages. Read more about the positive and negative aspects of online communication later in the article.

What is virtual communication and what is its peculiarity?

Communication on the Internet is a fairly young phenomenon and, as you might guess, it appeared at about the same time when access to the World Wide Web became practically universal and computers, and then smartphones with Internet access, appeared in almost every home.

The most common and popular method of virtual communication is correspondence . Today there is a huge variety of websites and portals designed for people from all over the planet to meet, communicate, start relationships, exchange various life experiences, or, for example, help each other study a particular topic (learning foreign languages through conversations with native speakers - one of the most popular types of communication for educational purposes).

On dating sites, social networks, instant messengers and chat rooms, people can have conversations with each other, look for friends and even their soulmate.

However, communication in virtual space is not limited only to text. With the development of computer technology, it has become possible, having a webcam or a mobile device equipped with a camera, to make video calls and communicate with people living hundreds and thousands of kilometers away.

Also gaining popularity is a method of interaction on the Internet, such as communication while playing . There are a great variety of online games that are played by millions of gamers from all over the world. This is a great way to make friends with whom you have common interests, and also, if the game is foreign, to develop English (or any other) language skills.

Advantages of Internet communication

The very fact of communicating with different people, removing all barriers is a plus, especially when it comes to work. This is virtual communication that allows many people to work from the comfort of their home. And for those who are depleted of real energy contacts (often these are introverted people), this is a real salvation.

Everything related to work and the Internet is a plus. Apart from other nuances, the absence of elements of non-verbal communication. Sometimes this can cause confusion or misconceptions about the person. But this can be solved. Let's stop here and talk about Internet entertainment.

Among the advantages are the following:

An opportunity for people suffering from shyness, complexes or anxiety to make friends, find friends and life partners;
voluntary interaction;
ability to control semantic, content, grammatical and other aspects of information
the ability to immediately find additional materials and explanatory facts;
the ability to break off communication and blacklist a person (a plus, but controversial);
stimulating self-motivation, increasing self-esteem and adding self-confidence (for example, journaling and communicating with “thought brothers” while losing weight);
development of fine motor skills.

Advantages of Internet communications

Perhaps the main advantage of virtual communication is the ability to contact people who are located at fairly large distances . Skype, Facebook, various instant messengers and other social networks allow us to stay in touch with friends and relatives living in other cities and countries.
In addition, communicating on the Internet is an excellent chance to make acquaintances with citizens of foreign countries , study their culture and language, as well as gain new experiences and impressions.
In the vastness of the World Wide Web, it is much easier to find like-minded people and people with whom you have common interests . This is especially useful if there are no friends or interesting personalities in your immediate circle with whom you would like to make friends, or if you do not have the opportunity to make acquaintances in reality (for example, due to illness). Thus, the Internet helps to be included in social communications, even if it is not possible to physically interact with society for one reason or another.
Virtual communication is a real salvation for shy , timid and reserved individuals, for whom meeting people on the street or at work can be problematic due to the characteristics of their character and psyche. But quiet people can easily support a conversation in a chat or conference and even become the soul of a virtual company.
Another feature of communication on the Internet is the ability to stop communicating with a person you don’t like . And you won’t have to explain the reasons for your actions, make excuses, or tolerate an annoying or unpleasant interlocutor - you just need to log out.
In some cases, during a conversation with a virtual interlocutor, we become more sincere and can say more about ourselves than if we were communicating with a real person. The stranger at the other end of the cable does not know us, which means he will not spill secrets and innermost secrets to those around us.

Interview question: Name three pros and cons of working with people.

The purpose of the question is to assess the “I want” area and determine the motivators and demotivators of a particular applicant in a specific area. I'll start with a story that one of my customers told me. Before our cooperation, he was looking for an operator in a call center on his own. The vacancy turned out to be extremely urgent, and it was filled without much thought by a friend of the system administrator.

To the owner’s question, “Can you handle it?” the girl happily replied that she knew how to talk on the phone, and began her new duties. But after a couple of weeks, everything started to irritate me: there are a lot of calls, the clients are stupid, rude, etc. In general, they broke up with the girl. Now she also works as an operator, but not as a telephone operator, but as a PC operator. This is to the question that what the applicant can do is not always something he does with pleasure.

It is still forgivable for a person inexperienced in matters of personnel assessment to make such a mistake. But alas, our colleagues also often evaluate exclusively the candidate’s “can” zone and completely forget to evaluate the “want” zone.

If we want to find out how a candidate feels about a particular factor, task, condition, action, we can use the “Three Pluses and Three Minuses” assessment method. In this case, we find out how the candidate feels about working with people.

Question: “Please name three pros and cons of working with people.”

This technique cannot be fooled. But it must be remembered that questions from the field of psycholinguistics must be asked at an intensive pace . And it is important to remember that it is not the content of the answers that is assessed here, but rather the form of the answer.

How to evaluate?

First of all, quantitatively. Most candidates name more pros or more cons depending on how they feel about this factor. Or, on the contrary, they cannot find more than 2 pros or cons. If the candidate sees more advantages in working with people, he names them; if there are more disadvantages, then he names more disadvantages.

Let's look at examples of two candidates and draw conclusions

Analysis of the first candidate's answers

Name three pros and three cons of working with people
Minuses	pros
You get irritated quickly	You can make new friends
A lot of angry people, negative, inadequate	There are interesting, intelligent people who are a pleasure to work with.
You have to communicate, even if you are not in the mood. This is stress, emotional tension.

Conclusions:

This candidate named more disadvantages than advantages. It is obvious that the candidate sees more negative than positive when working with people. Such a candidate is not recommended for consideration for vacancies that involve constant communication with people. The candidate, most likely, has little contact and may unconsciously, having a lack of communication and the need for it, strive to consider similar vacancies in order to make new acquaintances.

Analysis of the second candidate's answers:

Three pros and three cons of working with people
pros	Minuses
communication, it’s always interesting to communicate with people of different types, social categories, etc.	It happens that sometimes you are not in the mood to communicate with someone
you can learn something, gain an idea or information.	Boring people meet
When you work with people, your work day goes quickly and interestingly	There are people with whom it is not easy to carry on a conversation

Conclusions:

Based on the candidate’s answers, we can conclude that working with people in general attracts him. I would ask additional questions to understand which category of clients can unsettle the candidate or even provoke a conflict.

Additional questions:

Why is it easy to work with some clients and difficult with others?

Who is the ideal client?

What is a complex client?

There are difficulties in assessing in a quantitative way, since there are exceptions, people who are accustomed to strictly following instructions, said three minuses and three pluses, three and named each. In this case, pay attention to the response speed. Where the candidate does not see any pros or cons for himself, he begins to think that the response rate will drop.

Another point to evaluate responses is consistency. Naturally, under conditions where this technique is used several times. If the candidate started talking about the pros in all answers, but in a specific question he started with the cons. This means that he sees more disadvantages here.

An additional control question to assess the opposite field of activity.

The question: “Name three pros and cons of working with documents” will help confirm the picture of the candidate’s “want” zone.

Three pros and three cons of working with documents

First candidate

Name three pros and three cons of working with documents
pros	Minuses
Quiet work, no need to run anywhere, no need to rush	My eyes get tired. Need to take breaks
No one distracts	Sometimes you don't know where to start
No unpredictable moments	Well, I don’t know, my back is a little stiff
Physically not difficult work

Conclusions:

This answer makes it clear to us that the candidate likes working with documents , the disadvantages are less significant and there are fewer of them, and the answers are slower. The answer “It happens, you don’t know where to start” is a hint of diligence, the habit of working according to the algorithm (checked additionally)

Additional questions:

• Why do some people prepare reports well and on time, while for others this is a problem?

• Why do some people like working with documents, while others find it uninteresting?

Analysis of the second candidate

Three pros and three cons of working with documents
Minuses	pros
Sedentary work, all day in one position	Working indoors. Don't get wet in the rain
Requires great care	Mindfulness can be learned
Routine, monotonous. Endless, you don’t see the result
Not creative, boring. You can also fall asleep at work

Conclusions:

More cons than pros, the answer started with the cons. Obviously, the candidate does not like paperwork .

Here are some more examples of what we can offer to evaluate a candidate using the 3 pluses and 3 minuses method:

Name three pros and three cons of business trips
Name three pros and three cons of a situation when a client objects
Name three pros and three cons of working in a team
Name strictly three pros and three cons of your last job
Name three advantages and three disadvantages of independent decision making
Name three pros and three cons of kickbacks

Thus, the assessment using the “three pluses and three minuses” method gives us an idea of the candidate’s positive or negative perception of a particular phenomenon, process, certain conditions, etc.

Disadvantages of virtual communication

One of the features of communications on the Internet is the lack of real information about the interlocutor . On the other side of the screen, anyone can have a dialogue with you, and it is not at all necessary that they provide true information about themselves. It is very easy to stumble upon swindlers, swindlers, and even sick people on various resources. Therefore, you need to follow certain rules when communicating on the World Wide Web: do not provide any data about your location and your identity, and certainly not share data from bank cards and virtual wallets.
And of course, you shouldn’t even send intimate photos of yourself to your best friend or online lover. Firstly, a friend may be guided by a variety of motives when asking for such photographs. Secondly, not a single Internet resource is 100% secure and at any moment can be subject to a virtual attack by hackers or hacking - and your data will fall into the hands of complete strangers.
In addition to the real risks of losing money or, for example, damaging your reputation, there are also less serious, but annoying problems. So, the virtual interlocutor in a real meeting may not be the one you imagined . Likewise, you may well disappoint your online friend. You should be prepared for such a turn of events and not take possible communication problems to heart.
One of the advantages of virtual communication is the ability to interrupt a conversation with a person at any time without explanation . However, it is worth considering that your interlocutor may suddenly disappear from social networks or interrupt what would seem to be such confidential communication.

Disadvantages of online dating2

There are pros and cons to any business, and the network is no exception.

Disappointment is perhaps one of the most popular feelings. In the process of communicating with a person, one picture is presented, but when meeting, everything turns out to be the opposite. On the Internet, your interlocutor is a handsome romantic, but in reality it turns out that he is a domestic tyrant.
There is no way to see the eyes of the person with whom you are talking. But the eyes are the mirror of the soul, they can tell everything and give away thoughts.
The illusion of love and friendship. Often people are so absorbed in relationships on the Internet that they forget about real life. They live online, where their home, friends, and common affairs are. In fact, this is just a world invented by man, because in reality he cannot create the same conditions for himself.

Complete absence of any information about the person. Now more and more people are setting up second pages for themselves, as they call it “leftist”, and conducting conversations from them. There are no real photographs on such a profile; in the process of communication, a person carefully disguises his true character.
Often people do not agree on what causes swearing with subsequent transition to obscene language and mutual insult. In real life, most of these people are prevented from saying the same words by cowardice. But since opponents are on the other side of the monitor, they allow themselves such humiliating behavior.

Weighing the negative and positive aspects of dating online, we can come to the conclusion that there are still more advantages. In addition, according to the results of a sociological survey, it turned out that many married couples met on the Internet. Some met by chance on a forum, others on a dating site, and they live happily for many years.

Internet addiction in teenagers: ways to overcome it

Adults need to know and notice in time the first signs of adolescents’ emerging addiction to the Internet:

Some hastily completed homework - he hurries to the computer. At the same time, academic performance is significantly reduced.
A previously sociable child begins to experience problems and communicates not with friends or parents, but more on social networks. The computer becomes your main friend.
Reacts painfully to anything that takes him away from the monitor.
Stops taking care of his appearance.
Some games on the Internet require a small investment. He spends his pocket money on this, and when there is not enough of it, he cheats and even steals.

To prevent addiction or overcome its first signs, parents will have to take care of the safety of their children, as well as reduce the harm of the Internet to health:

Install special filters and programs to make viewing harmful sites inaccessible. Use the parental control mode, agree on your right to occasionally view communications and correspondence.
Do not leave obtaining information from the Internet uncontrolled, teach how to search for truthful information and sources.
Tell your child about gambling addiction, the dangers of addiction, and how to stay safe when communicating online. In particular, teach your student not to post personal information about age, place of residence, study, or telephone numbers on your page.
Introduce the culture and responsibility of behavior on the Internet: do not allow hooliganism, obscenity, threats, gossip, etc.
Limit your time on the computer so that it does not interfere with your homework, homework, or physical well-being.
Install the computer not in the nursery, but in the common room, in order to see what the child is interested in.
To avoid health problems, choose the right furniture, install a monitor, and lighting. Teach to take care of your eyesight, introduce the basic rules: take regular breaks, periodically look into the distance, do simple eye exercises.
Don’t set a bad example yourself: don’t surf the Internet unnecessarily, don’t take laptops or tablets into nature, etc.

Attentive parents will not leave their children alone with the Internet. There is serious work ahead - teaching a teenager the rules of using the Internet.