In life, learning to communicate between people can save a lot more time and pain than it can waste. Whether you’re communicating with your boss on how fairly or unfairly you are being treated, to communication between you and your significant other or your parents. Communication is so underrated and misunderstood in our society today, as people depend on non-verbal communication such as the way they cross their arms and legs or the type of “vibe” they give off. From an “it’s nothing. I’m fine” really meaning something’s wrong, our society has lost its touch when it comes to speaking to each other face to face. People are afraid of confrontation and conflict, consequences for their actions, and it’s causing our society to avoid communication. By avoiding communication, you are creating a bigger problem than you can avoid. By not communicating how you feel to someone who’s making you sad, they’ll never know how it’s affecting you. Communication is an important life skill that society needs to relearn and in this article, I will be listing examples of how communication is beneficial in today’s society.

If you are in a relationship- platonic or romantic- it’s important to let the other person know how you feel. If your friend or significant other is saying something that makes you uncomfortable, don’t just sit there and laugh with them, confront them and let them know what they’re saying isn’t cool. This goes both ways as well. If you like what your significant other friend is doing or saying, let them know so they can do or say it more often. Communication is very important, but so is its complementary action of listening. Communication in any relationship helps you get a better understanding of the other person. By voicing your opinions as well as listening to what the other person has to say, you can form a mutual agreement based on both of your understandings and build a strong foundation for the rest of your relationship. By being afraid of confrontation and conflict, you are only prolonging the inevitable. Statistically speaking, people in relationships that communicate tend to stay in relationships longer and happier than people who don’t communicate in their relationship. By communicating, you are allowing yourself to trust your partner and your partner to trust you.

Communicating with your parents is a bigger deal than most. By communicating with your parents on plans way ahead of time, communicating on what you need to get done, and any problem-solving points to pass by your parents shows responsibility and maturity. Communicating and listening will lead to trust between you and your parents and your parents will trust you to stay out longer, hang out more, etc. because of how responsible and mature you become. Miscommunication can make you seem childish, immature, and irresponsible and your parents won’t be as reluctant to let you go out more or have a longer curfew. 

You will need to be able to communicate with other people as well. Seeing that you might need a job, communicating is a very important life skill in the job place. A study shows that 32% of people would rather communicate via text, 51% of teens would rather communicate digitally than in-person, even with their friends, and 1 in 4 socialize more online than in person. When I say communicate” I mean face-to-face communication. If you are only able to communicate online, you will only limit yourself because you need to be able to voice your opinion and hear others out loud and in person, to be able to go places in life. Becoming so dependent on technology will cause an unhealthy normalization of online communication and we will lose touch with the people physically closest to us. We won’t be able to formulate and hold on to a functional relationship: platonic or romantic.