How digital body language is changing our relationships
The internet has made it easier than ever to contact our friends and loved ones – but has the rise of texting made it harder for us to truly communicate? ✍️ - Susan Akyeampong
I love voice notes: those half-hour messages allow me to stay connected to my friends’ daily lives, sharing dramas, brainstorming gym routines, ranting about our colleagues, all while doing a food shop. We’re not alone: WhatsApp reported a staggering 7 billion voice notes exchanged daily in 2023.
We enjoy this flexibility because in today’s fast-paced world, our schedules are increasingly packed and attention spans are increasingly fried, making synchronous communication – conversations happening in the moment, with back-and-forth exchange – more challenging. But there’s a catch. While voice notes and texts can be fun and easy, they can also be a breeding ground for misunderstandings. This is because online communication relies heavily on ‘digital body language’ – the emojis, punctuation, and response time that colour our messages and influence how we perceive them.
Digital body language might seem like a new phenomenon, but Steve Fuller, Professor of Social Epistemology at the University of Warwick, explains that even love letters in the past relied on deciphering hidden meaning. Throughout history, we’ve always sought meaning beyond our words in messages. Today, this continues online through the nuances of text speak. According to him, our online behaviour today can be traced back to Facebook’s thumbs-up button. This simple symbol, universally understood to signal approval, ushered in an era where we express our feelings – towards content, people, or situations – through a single, unambiguous emoji.
“Nowadays digital body language is associated with the increased use of emojis, which present stylised versions of various emotional responses,” he explains. “Emojis may seem to make communication more direct, in fact research increasingly shows that they complicate matters.”
This lack of context and tendency to overanalyse can have real-life consequences. I made this painful discovery last year during a serious conversation with my ex-boyfriend about our messaging habits. We’d exchanged voice notes back and forth, but the very convenience that drew me to them – multitasking – got me into trouble. Unlike a face-to-face conversation where you’re fully present, I’d often listen to his voice notes while doing other things, leading to a delayed or distracted response. This, to him, felt rude, dismissive, and like I was abruptly ending conversations. On the flipside, I found his use of the slightly-smiling-face emoji to be more passive-aggressive and sarcastic.
Looking back, the entire situation seems ridiculous and so childish, but it was no joke at the time. As we spend so much time online, our digital body language becomes deeply engrained in our online interactions, impacting our relationships with our closest people. This wasn’t an isolated incident for me either: one friend felt I was withdrawing from her because I hadn’t sent her a rambling voice note in a week, even though I’d been sending them to a mutual friend of ours. This pressure to maintain a certain level of online engagement felt a lot like digital presenteeism – the only logical solution seemed to be to send her more voice notes, even if they weren’t particularly meaningful, just to avoid appearing distant.
So, why is our digital body language such a minefield for misunderstandings? Unlike in-person communication where we have a wealth of cues to draw from, online interactions are a lot barer. Facial expressions, body language, and real-time responses are all missing. This makes communication asynchronous, relying heavily on deciphering the written word and emojis.
Counsellor Georgina Starmer highlights both the benefits and drawbacks of this asynchronous nature. “Some of this can be helpful if we are feeling anxious or insecure about what we have to say,” she says. “We have the opportunity to edit our words and ask someone else to review them. We have the chance to read the words we receive in our own time and at our own pace.”
However, Starmer cautions that online communication doesn’t always reflect our true personalities. Unlike face-to-face interactions where playful “throwaway comments” and sarcasm can be conveyed through tone and body language, texting lacks this. These lighthearted remarks can be misinterpreted in a text, “we might read them over and over again, and analyse their meaning, and experience them in a painful way.”
“I look out for a few things: if a guy takes ages to reply, like more than a day, he hates me, and he’s not interested” – Alicia*
This emphasis on analysing every word can fuel the pressure to stay connected through messaging. Data from Hinge highlights how we’re increasingly preoccupied with the way our partners communicate over text: 56 per cent of Hinge daters admit they’ve overanalysed someone’s digital body language, while Gen Z Hinge daters are 50 per cent more likely than Millennials to delay responding to a text to avoid seeming “overeager”.
This aligns with 23-year-old Alicia’s* experience. “I look out for a few things: if a guy takes ages to reply, like more than a day, he hates me, and he’s not interested,” she says. She also sees full stops as a sign of annoyance, and lengthy messages as a red flag for excessive eagerness. Shreya, 28, shares similar concerns, adding that closed answers signal a lack of interest in continuing the conversation.
It’s a constant balancing act, trying to appear engaged without seeming desperate. These anxieties create a vicious cycle – the fear of rejection makes us hyper-aware of digital body language cues, and this very awareness can lead us to send confusing signals ourselves, perpetuating the cycle further.
The pressure extends beyond dating to friendships as well. Emmanuel, 23, for instance, takes his time crafting messages when he has something serious or important to say. If he’s trying to resolve conflict over text, he adds a laughing emoji to soften the directness, fearing his message might be misread as angry. This again highlights how we not only read into certain cues but also adjust our communication style based on those interpretations.
But we can break free from this cycle. In today’s digital age, navigating online interactions requires the same intentionality as building real-life relationships. Setting clear boundaries and expectations around response times and emotional availability in our digital communication can help us navigate this landscape more effectively.
We need to keep the lines of communication clear between our friends, family and dates; making sure we’re having open discussions about preferred communication styles and response timeframes. This can help us dismantle ambiguity and create a more mindful digital space for ourselves. Ultimately, navigating digital body language effectively is about striking a balance – acknowledging its influence while explaining ourselves in conversations to avoid hurting each other’s feelings.
*Name has been changed
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