Listen Here! The Declining Art of Listening

Listen Here! The Declining Art of Listening

By Randy B. Young

Parents, teachers and communicators are fond of quoting Greek philosopher Epictetus: “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” We still have one mouth some 2,000 years later, but our eyes and ears are barraged with messaging strategically tailored to titillate us.

“At a time when we are more technologically linked than ever, our conversations have never been more fractured and disconnected, because most don’t know how to truly listen,” says Oscar Trimboli, author of “Deep Listening.”
If you’ve perceived a decline in listening skills societally, you’re not imagining things. The first step to a solution is admitting there’s a problem. A number of reputable psychologists in Connecticut are sounding the alarm and developing action steps to improve our listening.

Years in the Making

We have not come to this place overnight. It’s too easy to blame the demise of discourse on youths. (“Hmph, the kids today!”) Adults, parents and teachers have also been complicit in the decline.

“We toss out epithets like ‘narcissistic’ and ‘self-involved,’ but this is how many have been taught to interact,” says Tim Stevens, a therapist, writer for Connecticut College’s Office of Marketing and Communications, and adjunct professor for Connecticut College’s Department of Psychology.

Social scientists name the healthy practice of purposeful engagement as “active listening.” They identify that one of the factors most damaging to active listening is the prominence of social media.

Author of the best-selling “The Anxious Generation” book, Jonathan Haidt notes that, “Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them…into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable, and…unsuitable for children and adolescents.”

“It’s FOMO, or fear of missing out,” states Chris Abildgaard, a psychology professor at University of Hartford and director of the Social Learning Center in Cheshire. “I have parents of six-year-olds in my clinic; their parents say they can’t get their child off the Discord social media app. My question is, ‘Why does your six-year-old have access to Discord?’ Parents will say, ‘I give [my kids] the technology so that they aren’t bored anymore because when they’re bored…they bother me.’”

Zoom-Zoom

“Matters got even more challenging during COVID when most students attended virtual classrooms, but Zoom interaction was a poor stand-in for in-person communication,” adds Marc Brackett, Ph.D., a professor at the Yale Child Study Center, director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and author of “Dealing with Feeling.”

“You can’t pick up on nuance,” he says. “You’re more tempted to be distracted and double-dip or triple-dip, always checking email or doing something other than being present.”

Since the emergence of smartphone technology, a lack of communication skills has led to related problems, including depression. “This is the great irony of social media,” Haidt wrote. “The more you immerse yourself in it, the more lonely and depressed you become.”

Cut to Cure

Unfettered online access, a year of virtual education and inconsistent modeling of conversational skills have contributed to poor listening habits over decades. The good news is that bad habits can be unlearned.

“Over time and with exposure, we’ll hopefully start to see a return of [active listening] behaviors…naturally as kids are now back in person in classrooms,” Stevens adds.

Most experts say active listening should include attention to total meaning, responding to feelings and being alert to nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions, body language and others.

Conversely, an example of poor listening is “hi-jacking,” such as interrupting a friend’s description of their vacation to Maine to describe our own trip.

“In my own research, people feel they can be their true selves with people who are non-judgmental, good listeners, and show empathy and compassion,” Brackett says. “I don’t think people are really taught how to do that as much as they should be.”

We Are the Very Model…

“I think good modeling, at least for parents, might be starting up a meal by asking a good question,” comments Brackett about the onus also falling on adults.

“Family dinners are a great partial solution,” Abildgaard agrees. “The number of families out there today that actually have family dinners has declined in the past 20 years by an astronomical percentage.”

Brackett praises an emergent “positive empathy” initiative. “We’re used to thinking about empathy as…showing your concern for something that went wrong. But research actually shows that we have closer relationships with people who engage in positive empathy.” As such, Brackett suggests moving from asking how a person’s day was to, “Tell me about the best part of your day. What made it great?”

“All of a sudden, you’re embellishing a child’s pleasant experience,” he explains. “Research shows that, longitudinally speaking, when that kid is older and reflects back on their childhood, they’re going to feel more connected to the person who expressed positive empathy versus traditional empathy.”

Reconnecting Connecticut

With his new book “Permission to Feel” in hand, Brackett is currently a crusader for better communication and less social media in schools, a once-quixotic notion that is quickly gaining support.

“I’m on a mission to make Connecticut the first emotionally intelligent state,” Brackett states. “I’m having lunch with the head of the superintendent’s [office], the principals’ union, the teachers’ union. We’re talking about bringing these practices to all Connecticut schools. We’ve been training children from early on how to be distracted. We spend very little time helping people learn how to be still. If we want to have a society where people can actually be present and have healthy relationships, we need to help people literally train their minds to be still.”

Despite the magnitude of the problem, Brackett remains hopeful in our ability to retrain our brains. “The areas of our brain responsible for building these skills are with us until we die. We’re works in progress; we can all strive to be better versions of ourselves.”

A graduate of Dartmouth College, Randy B. Young worked in advertising in New England before relocating and working in communications for the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. N.C. Recently retired, he is a freelance writer and photographer.