After over a year spent staring at a screen for classes, first dates and catch-ups with family members, we finally get to ditch Zoom and see people face-to-face. For some, the time spent socializing from your bedroom was relished, and for others, the demise of Zoom cocktail hours is a time for celebrations. But the reintroduction to the world of in-person communication is not going as smoothly as some would have expected.
Now that classrooms and offices are beginning to reopen, people across the world are beginning to realize that they don’t know how to interact with people anymore.
In an article from the New York Times, journalist Kate Murphy explains how scientists have begun to draw parallels between the effects of isolation in inmates, astronauts, and other people who have been completely cut off from society to what people are experiencing now.
In the process of reintegration, previously isolated individuals have rusty social skills and often experience feelings of loneliness and feeling unsure of how to interact with others.
“The privation sends our brains into survival mode, which dampens our ability to recognize and appropriately respond to the subtleties and complexities inherent in social situations,” Murphy reports.
This impact is likely to have especially dire consequences for children and teenagers; for elementary through high schoolers, the subjects they learn in school aren’t the only important thing – it’s learning how to socialize with their peers.
A study published in the Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences found that quarantine has proven to have a “far reaching and significant negative impact on psychological wellbeing of children and adolescents … [which] can still be detected months or years later.”
Even for college students and adults, over a year spent with minimal interaction with our peers might have some shocking effects.
An article from Healthline explains how many subtle cues of communication like eye contact and body language do not translate through online interactions – meaning that the reintegration into in-person communication may suddenly seem overwhelming and confusing.
In my life, I was shocked to find how uncomfortable I suddenly was speaking in front of groups. Where I’d always thrived in discussion-based learning, jumping into conversations at proper times and engaging in meaningful back-and-forth with professors, I’ve found myself hesitating in classes to share my thoughts. I’ve always felt a little frustrated by the stiffness that accompanies the “raise hand” feature on Zoom or similar sites, but now that it’s not there anymore, I find that finding a time to speak is more stressful than actually speaking – so I often don’t.
Anxiety, too, has taken an upswing since things have begun reopening. Something as simple as taking the Metro, once an everyday occurrence, feels like climbing a mountain.
Fortunately, some research suggests that after the initial spike in anxiety and stress associated with social reintegration, the cognitive changes will lessen as time goes on. The road back to “normal” is a long and bumpy one, but hopefully with practice, we can relearn how to be near each other.