Reasons Why Cell Phone Hurt Your Interpersonal Relationship And How To Turn It Around
No doubt, cell phone has really enhanced the way we live our life with the way it makes communication between people almost effortlessly. Through cell phone you can reach your love ones, relatives, friend and families, irrespective of the distance between you and anyone you want to reach at a particular time.
As it is that, every good thing also has the other side of the coin, and cell phone can’t be singled out of this. The usefulness of cell phone overshadows the negative effect it has on our relationship life but the little negative effect does something not too encouraging to our interpersonal relationship.
The presence of your cell phone alone is a distraction to you whether you like it or not. It really hurt human interpersonal relationship except you know about this and takes certain actions to reduce that effect.
When you are without your cell phone, or when it is switch off, you can achieve lots of things especially if it is something that needs your total concentration. Maybe when you’re in a meeting, preparing for examination, having a heart-to-heart talk with your wife/husband or girlfriend/boyfriend.
How frustrated could you be if when you need someone attention and the person is busy communicating with another person through his/her cell phone? Sure, you’ll feel really bad about it no matter what reasons it might be; you can’t build positive emotion with the person, you can’t really trust the person to fully understand what you’re trying to discuss with him/her. It makes you feel disconnected especially if the person you’re talking to is your couple or someone you’re in a romantic relationship with.
Broken interpersonal connections can create a trauma to the self, you’ll feel let down, disappointed and the frustration can be so huge, and it can make you to put up a reaction to the loss of feedback from others – that has to do with the emotion of shame.
I was in a programme where I was invited as a guest speaker, and after speaking for two hours plus, I felt the people needed a break and I told them to go on a break for 10 minutes and use that 10 minutes to interact with other participant at that programme. I even said they should ensure they speak to at least two persons before the break is over.
But immediately we went on break, the whole place was silence for 5 minutes; nobody was talking to another person. Guess what is happening? To my surprise, everyone was busy communicating with their cell phone; no interpersonal communication until the 10 minutes was over.
Cell phone communication make some people socially occupied even if they are not social and it even make it difficult for other people to communicate or seek their opinions on issues affecting them.
In an article written on Scientific American website on how your cell phone affect your relationship; it was stated that, the mere presence of a cell phone affect how you relate with other people surrounding you.
It thus further stated; interacting in a neutral environment where you don’t have your cell phone nearby, help in building closeness, interpersonal trust, connectedness and perception of empathy which is the building block of every relationships.
How then do you try to turn things around and feel connected to people and your partner?
When the need arise to be connected, it is advisable to completely put your phone on silence if you don’t want to miss friend and family or even your boss text messages. If you’re to discuss serious issues with your partner and really feel connected, your best bet is to completely switch off your phone, it help you to completely take off your mind from the distraction coming from the cell phone and enhance your connectedness with your partner, thereby increase your interpersonal relationship with effective communication.
I bet you, you’ll be more focus and the feeling of being disconnected from your partner will be a thing of the past.
Even on your first date, if you don’t know how to handle things, it can hamper your chances of convincing your potential partner.
Have you even felt disconnected with anyone when you wanted to really have a good conversation with them and instead the person pays more attention to his or her cell phone than what you’re saying?
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