Eye contact and the failure of modern communication

I see him coming down the hall, his head down, eyes scanning the phone that seems to be permanently glued to his hand. I wonder what could be so important that makes the rest of the world dissolve around him. Oblivious to my gaze, he misses the smile and the nod. A friendly “Good morning” rests on my tongue, waiting to leap off as soon as he looks up. We quickly pass by each-other, the air currents swirl between us. “too much cologne” I think to myself as the scent dominates the air. Maybe the cologne is a cover for his insecurities, a scent meant to cover the fear inside him. Days, weeks and months go by, sometimes he stares at the phone, sometimes it’s a blank stare straight ahead, and sometime the floor captures his attention. I wish he were just one data point, an anomaly within the office, but he is the rule, not the exception. Girls, guys older people and young college grads all falling short of the most basic of human interaction: Eye contact.

It’s been said that “the eyes are the window to the soul” and if that is true, then what does it say when someone won’t make eye contact when talking to you? This phenomenon is pervasive in modern society. I work with hundreds of engineers, and the vast majority of them cant hold eye to eye contact for more than a second, if they can even connect at all. This hindrance of communication has always baffled me, because the eyes of a person can tell so much about who they are and what they are thinking. It can often convey more than their words. Communication is more effective when the people participating have a common starting ground.

Person to person and face to face communication has been the primary form of expressing our interest, our hatred, or our confusion toward one another for as long as humans have been humans. In the last decade, cell phones, E-mail and social media have made eye contact and reading body language a lost art. This harms the very fabric of what makes us humans, and what makes us the social creatures we are. We should notice each-other more, and work towards effective communication so we don’t alienate one another in this world. We should start with eye contact, the most basic and maybe the most important form of communication we have.

Have you noticed the lack of eye contact in our species growing in your life? Does where you work and the people around you have an impact on the amount of eye contact you make throughout the day? Do other people get uncomfortable when you make eye contact with them when talking? Let me know in the comments below.