The influence of social media on non-verbal communication

Non-verbal communication. We all use it, mostly without being conscious that we are using it. Your body language might betray your emotions when you are trying to hide them. It might reveal the fact that you are lying when you don't want people to know the truth. However, it might also come in very useful when you want to tell someone something which another person within hearing distance is not supposed to hear.

Non-verbal cues often tell you more about a person than verbal language. Not just body language, but also intonation is a very useful cue to tell what a person really means. For example, think about sarcasm. Without non-verbal cues, a person would just take your words literally. However, the intonation usually tells you whether a person uses sarcasm or not.

The importance of non-verbal communication implies a problem in recent life: communication through social media. More and more communication takes place via Hyves, Facebook or Twitter. Using these mediums, non-verbal cues are not visible. It is easy to type something on a social medium while you feel something completely else. Since your body language is not visible to the receiver, he will likely evaluate your words as truthful. The same holds for intonation. This is also not visible on social media, which means it is much harder to recognize sarcasm.

Another problem with social media, is that emotions are not visible. A small solution to this are smileys, which resemble your emotion. However, these smileys might not resemble your true emotion, but just the emotion you want other people to think you experience on a certain moment. Again, the absence of body language forms a problem.

We talked about the phenomenon with assistant professor Martijn Goudbeek. His expertise is in the field of emotions and non-verbal communication. We posed him the question: 'What influence does social media have on non-verbal communication?' His vision on this will be shown in the video below.

What is your opinion on this issue? Will non-verbal communication become less important through the use of social media, or will it eventually become more important again through webcams and comparable new technologies?

Reduction or fine?

The Dutch railways (NS) has plans to invalidate their reduction card between 17pm and 19pm, to avoid busy trains during these rush hours. The initial reaction to this announcement will probably be that it is unfair, since people holding a reduction card pay for this reduction so they should be allowed to use it. Well, fair enough, but apart from this problem, this new rule will carry some other implications.


Suppose a person wants to travel by a train which leaves at 16.30pm and is suppose to arrive at that person's destination at 16.55pm. This does not seem like a problem. However, what if the train is delayed and now arrives at 17.10pm? Technically, this person is travelling in non-reduction time, but he couldn't have known this before he got on the train. So, is he supposed to be fined or not?

Let's make the problem a little more complicated then. What if this person's train leaves at 16.30pm and is supposed to arrive at his destination at 17.10pm? In this case the traveler knows on beforehand that he will be travelling in non-reduction time. However, the largest part of his journey is in the reduction time. Does he have to buy a full-price ticket for the whole journey even though the largest part of it is in the reduction time, or not? Does he have to leave the train at the last stop before 17pm to buy a full-price ticket for the last 10 minutes of his journey?

The same problem exists for the other side of the time border. What if a person has to take a train that leaves at 18.45pm and arrives at his destination at 19.40pm?

Of course, the non-reduction time already exists in the morning. However, this time limit has only one border, since the reduction card now is not valid only before 9am. This still implies the same problem as the person leaving on the 18.45pm train, but does avoid the delayed train problem.

A remaining question is, of course, whether this non-reduction time rule will have a noticeable effect. People who take the train to go to work will still take the train at the same time, since that is the time their working day ends. People that have arrangements in the evenings, will also still take the same train to arrive on time for their arrangements.
Who remain are the people that travel by train to go out for a day. The morning time limit may work for these people, since they might make the decision to leave after 9am instead of earlier. However, these people will probably not travel between 17pm and 19pm anyway. They will probably try to avoid the rush hour anyway, or try to make the best of their day by extending it and not take an early train back.

So, try to weigh off the advantages of the non-reduction time against the disadvantages. Are the advantages worth the trouble?