Welcome to the Listening Time podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 205 of the Listening Time podcast.
I hope you're all doing great today.
I hope that you're excited to practice your listening comprehension in English with another Listening Time episode and, And in today's episode I want to talk about how communication has changed over time.
This is something that we might not realize in the moment when The change is happening, but when you take a step back and you examine how we used to communicate with people and how we communicate with people now, you'll probably notice some pretty big differences, some different ways of actually communicating with people.
I think this is natural.
As time passes, new technology comes out and we use new tools, new methods to communicate with people.
It's become very easy to communicate with lot of people around the world in different countries.
It has never been as easy as it is now.
So that's a good thing, of course, but I do think back to maybe my childhood and some of the ways that I used to communicate with people, and I get a little bit of nostalgia when I think of those ways.
I wanted to talk a little bit about this, and so I hope you enjoy this topic.
And I want to encourage you to try out my advanced episodes, if you haven't done so up to this point, so you can get accustomed to listening to English spoken at normal speed, not slow like I'm speaking now.
So if you're interested in those advanced episodes, the link to sign up is down below in the description, and you can also sign up for my us conversations podcast, in which i talk to people from all around the us about different topics.
You'll learn a lot about the country and the different regions When you listen to these different episodes.
It's really fun.
It's really interesting.
And this is a skill you'll eventually need to develop to be able to understand when more than one person is talking.
So if you want that, that link is also down below.
And, as always, please remember to give this podcast a five star rating and write a review, if you can.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time!
Okay, let's talk about how communication has changed.
I'll talk mostly about communication in my lifetime.
Of course, in the past there were other forms of communication, different technologies that preceded our current technology, meaning they came before our current technology.
But I want to focus mostly on the forms of communication that I am familiar with.
The first one I wanted to talk about is writing letters.
If you're really young, if you're a teenager or even if you're in your early 20s.
I consider you very young if you're in your early 20s.
If that's your case, then you might not have much experience with writing letters.
We might say that writing letters is kind of a lost art. nowadays.
That's a phrase that we use to talk about something that used to be common and now many people have forgotten how to do it.
So it's a lost art nowadays because, let's face it, we don't really need to write letters anymore.
We can communicate in easier ways.
But when I was a kid, writing letters was still a thing.
It was still a way of communication.
I remember writing letters as a kid.
I had some friends in a different state because they moved away from California and And I remember writing letters to them and receiving letters to them.
It was always really exciting to check the mailbox and to see a letter addressed to me, meaning it is for me.
It was sent to me.
My name is on it.
It was always exciting to see letters addressed to me with the stamp on it.
And I see that it's from a friend that was always really exciting.
I enjoyed opening the envelope and pulling pulling out the letter and reading it.
And it was always interesting to see people's handwriting.
That's something that we don't focus on that much nowadays.
Maybe in school it's still a priority, but we don't need to write a lot of things down by hand nowadays, because we can note it in our phone, for example.
So I used to know the handwriting of some of my different friends.
Now I have no idea what my different friends' handwriting looks like, because I don't really see them write anything.
But in the past, it was interesting to see people's different handwriting.
I remember that girls typically had pretty nice handwriting, like cute handwriting.
They would make a point of writing in a cute way.
Whereas the boys would usually have very messy handwriting.
It was usually not so cute, let's say.
But I remember sending letters to friends and receiving letters, even with friends at school.
I remember exchanging letters with some different people, mostly girls.
I think that girls had this tendency.
They had this habit or they liked to do this.
Boys, not as much.
But when you had a friend who was a girl or maybe younger, you liked her and you wanted to be closer to her, then you might exchange letters with them.
I don't know if this is still done nowadays in school, but I did this with several people.
We also exchanged notebooks.
I don't know if any of you ever did this, but I remember having a notebook that I would exchange with someone.
I would write a letter or I would write like a journal entry almost.
I would talk about my day and What is on my mind and stuff like that.
And then I would give it to that friend or leave it somewhere where they would go retrieve it, meaning they would go pick it up.
And then they would take their turn and write something in the notebook and I would read it afterwards.
I did this with a couple people.
I don't know if any of you ever did this, but I remember doing this and I actually found one of these notebooks recently in my closet.
And so it was kind of funny to look through this and to see what we wrote to each other.
It was a little embarrassing to see the kinds of things I would write as a kid, but it was funny.
So I remember writing letters like that in notebooks.
Nowadays, I don't think this type of communication is very common, unless people just really like writing by hand.
Because if we want to just communicate in the easiest way with other people in text, we just text each other, send each other messages via cell phone or email on the computer or whatever.
So I think that young people today probably don't really know how to write a letter.
They might not know how to address an envelope, like how to put the right words, the name and address on an envelope to send.
Where to put the stamp and the return address.
Young people might not even know how to do that nowadays.
And of course, like I said, people don't really use pencils and pens as much nowadays.
This happens to me a lot, where I need a pen because I need to fill out some form in black ink or blue ink.
And I can't even find a pen in my house, because I just use pens so infrequently only when I'm filling out certain government forms or something.
And that was not the case when I was growing up.
When I was growing up, there were pencils and pens everywhere because we used them all the time.
So things have really changed.
This experience of writing a letter by hand and exchanging that or sending that.
That is kind of a lost art nowadays and this is not something that's very popular.
It's kind of sad, but i do want to mention that letters can still be useful and powerful.
I've heard two stories recently about people who were able to buy their house or their apartment because of a letter they sent to the previous owner.
These people did not have the highest offer on the house, meaning they didn't offer more money than the other people.
But they wrote a letter explaining their situation and how they envisioned their family would enjoy this house and that they would raise kids there.
And when the owners received those letters, they chose these people to buy the house, even though their offers weren't higher than the other people's offers.
I think that's really cool.
It shows that writing letters is still somewhat relevant, like it can still be a powerful form of communication.
I think that that illustrates that point.
I wanted to mention that as well.
I think that's pretty cool.
Another type of communication I wanted to talk about is phone calls.
Obviously, we still do this.
This isn't something that is only in the past.
However, I think we did this much more in the past, at least in my opinion and in my experience.
Before texting was a big thing, and for me, texting became big more or less in high school, like when I was 14 or so.
That's when texting became really big and we started sending messages to each other.
Before that, we would usually talk on the phone with our friends after school or on the weekend.
And I never do that nowadays.
I don't call people just to talk like I used to when I was 13, 12, 11.
I think that many of you, if you're my age, you might be able to identify with this.
I used to spend pretty good amount of time on the phone, like when I was in middle school.
I remember talking for hours on the phone with people and I think it was partly because we had just gotten cell phones and we really wanted to use our cell phones and, And I remember at that time I knew my friend's phone numbers by heart.
I could tell you their numbers.
I think if I were to think really hard about it right now, I might still remember some of my old friend's phone numbers.
So that just goes to show how much we talked on the phone.
We use that phrase, that goes to show, to mean this is evidence that blah, blah, blah.
So that goes to show how much I talked to people on the phone back then.
I remember having different ringtones for different friends.
Meaning when one friend would call me, it would be a certain ringtone.
And then another friend would call me and it would ring in a different way.
We were interested in that kind of thing at that time.
And I'm sure older people, people who are maybe 15, 20 years older than me, I'm not calling you old.
I'm saying older than me.
Don't get me wrong.
Older people probably still talk on the phone a lot more than younger people do.
I think younger people probably don't talk on the phone nearly as much as I did when I was young.
And I'm sure most young people nowadays prefer sending written messages, text messages or whatever.
So I think that that has definitely changed, even though, of course, we still talk on the phone.
I'm not saying that this is antiquated.
I'm just saying we did this a lot more in the past.
And we also used landlines. meaning we had phones in our house that weren't cell phones.
I remember using the landline phone and talking to my friends.
I remember calling people from that phone.
I don't remember the last time I saw a landline phone in someone's house.
So that is definitely an older thing.
Another thing I wanted to mention another not form of communication, but it's related to that is knocking on people's doors.
And hear me out, meaning be patient.
You might not know what I'm talking about, but just listen.
You know, hear me out.
Many people nowadays young people I think not older people, but younger people feel kind of strange knocking on people's doors unannounced, which is weird because doors are there to be knocked on.
Of course they're there to be opened too, but we knock on doors and there are doorbells, because that's a normal thing to do.
However, I even remember that when I got older, like towards the end of my high school period and when I was a very young adult, I felt strange knocking on my friends' doors if they lived with their family.
I always felt that I needed to call them first or text them before knocking on their door, or I wouldn't knock on the door.
Normally what I would do was I would call them and say hey, I'm here, instead of just ringing the doorbell or knocking on their door.
Now that I think about it, that's very strange.
But I'm sure a lot of people know what I'm talking about.
I remember just recently, twice actually, I had someone come and do some work on my car.
He was cleaning my lights.
But when he arrived, this was a very young guy.
Instead of knocking on the door, he called me and said I'm here.
And then, throughout the hour that he worked on my car, both of those times he would call me if he needed something, even though he was right outside my house.
He refused to knock on my door or ring my doorbell.
He would only call me every time he needed me to come out.
I think that that is representative of how many young people feel.
They don't feel very confident ringing people's doorbells and knocking on people's doors.
I even think that People in their own house sometimes feel a strange feeling when they hear someone ring their doorbell, like they're not expecting it.
Like, huh, who could that be, right?
Who's knocking on the door?
Like, they even view it as strange because unless you're expecting someone...
It's kind of rare in many cases, maybe not in your country, but here in the US you don't really expect to hear people ring your doorbell that much anymore because, like I said, people don't do that that much anymore.
It's kind of funny, but that's how it is, and so i even feel like this sometimes, like if there's no package that i'm expecting or there's no person, no guest that's coming over, if someone rings my doorbell i think huh, that's weird, who's that?
I don't know why I have that thought.
I guess it's just because we're not accustomed to knocking on people's doors that much anymore.
So I think that that's a big change from maybe 30, 40 years ago.
Even when I was a little kid, like when I was six, seven years old, I remember knocking on people's doors and going over to my neighbor's house, knocking on his door, asking if he could play.
I remember doing that all the time.
And I think for adults even, it was still pretty normal to knock on people's doors.
We couldn't send text messages just saying, hey, I'm outside your house.
We didn't have that capability back then.
So that's also something that made it more normal to knock on people's doors, I think.
One other thing I wanted to talk about is face-to-face communication, like in-person meetings.
This is also getting rarer nowadays with digital communication, because if we need to actually see people and talk to them, we can just do that via video call through the different apps that allow for that.
For work, for example.
Many people work from home and they have meetings where they just have their video conference call and they see the other people on their screen and that's it.
So that's kind of face-to-face, but it's not the same thing as meeting with a person in real life and talking to them in the same room.
That is definitely different, even though, yes, we can see them through the camera.
These are two different things, in my opinion.
I get the feeling that people nowadays aren't as skilled at in-person, face-to-face meetings as people were in the past.
I think that when we are with people in the same room, if they're not our close friends or our family, I think that people tend to get a little bit uncomfortable about the little things, the little details related to communication.
For example, eye contact.
Many of you can probably identify with this.
It might feel weird to maintain eye contact for a long time when you're in the same room with someone you don't know well and you're having a conversation.
People feel uncomfortable with this.
And I don't think that that was, uh, a big problem in the past.
I think people were accustomed to maintaining eye contact.
Nowadays, not so much.
I've noticed this.
People look visibly uncomfortable When they have to do this and they usually look away.
They will look at you for a second and then look away for three seconds.
And I think that this has become something hard for a lot of people nowadays.
I think that conversational skills in general aren't as prominent, aren't as emphasized for kids and teenagers anymore, because of the fact that they can talk to people digitally.
It's a lot simpler.
And I think we tend to generalize here.
But many people talk about the youth of today as not having the same level of conversational skills when they're in person.
They might feel awkward, they feel uncomfortable, maybe not at ease.
Of course, I'm generalizing here.
Don't get mad at me.
You might have a son or a daughter who's very good at this, or maybe you're young and you're very good at this.
Please don't take offense.
I'm not trying to talk bad about the youth.
I'm just saying that, as communication changes, certain skills become less emphasized.
As time goes on, certain ways of communication get lost.
This is just what happens.
So I think video calls even though you're seeing the other person they're easier because it creates more of a distance.
Most people don't really feel as uncomfortable when they're maintaining eye contact on a video call as when they're maintaining eye contact in person.
I think that they feel more at ease when it's through a computer.
Even though you're looking at the person, it doesn't feel as intimidating to maintain eye contact with them.
So video calls make this easier for people.
And I'm very thankful for video calls.
I've given thousands of hours of classes via video calls.
So this is great, of course.
But I also think that it's good to gain skills talking to people in real life, gain conversational skills, become more comfortable when you're face to face with someone.
I still think that's important.
I think that that will never not be important.
So I just wanted to mention that.
And nowadays, of course, everything is becoming more digital.
Communication is more digital.
Of course, text and video and everything like that.
And I don't know what's next.
It'll be interesting to see what forms of communication appear in the next 50 years.
I'm sure things will change a lot in the future as well.
I hope you enjoyed this episode and that it was good practice for your listening.
Remember to try out my advanced episodes.
Even if you're a little nervous about listening to someone speak fast, just try them out and see how you like them.
And I'm sure they'll be helpful for you.
That link is down below.
And also try out my US Conversations podcast.
Try practicing listening to more than one person talking.
That link is also down below as well.
And please give this podcast a five-star rating and write a review if you can.
I hope that you all appreciate all of this content and that it has helped you.
And if so, I would appreciate a five-star rating and a nice review.
All right.
Thank you all so much for listening to this episode.
And I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
