Comment by jjk166 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jjk166 | Hacker News Reader

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And if someone at the bar buys you a drink and you're not totally sure why, you can go over to them and say "Hey, I don't understand this message. Can you explain it to me?" You posses the social skill to ask for clarification, you lack the social skill of flirting.

That I can have someone translate to and from Urdu for me does not mean I have the social skill required to communicate via Urdu. Likewise, that your parents can ask you whether something is spam or not doesn't mean they have the social skill required to communicate via email.

Wikipedia defines social skills as:

"A social skill is any competence facilitating interaction and communication with others where social rules and relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways."

If the ability to effectively communicate via a medium doesn't satisfy that definition, what does? You are welcome to use a different definition, but that's what I am referring to by social skills.

Flirting and speaking a foreign language are a false equivalence to not knowing how to e-mail or use social media.

Whether using your definition or another, my point still stands that social media does not lead to GREATER social skills than previous generations possessed.

Not being skilled in ALL aspects of socialization isn't the same thing as lacking social skills in general.

I really see no difference between trying to determine if someone is in to you based on how long they emphasize the y in hey versus trying to determine if someone is into you based on the number of times they repeat the letter y in heyyy.

I never claimed that social media leads to objectively greater social skills, there's no reason why being able to write a great email is inherently superior to being able to write a great telegraph message. However, one skill is undeniably more useful in this day and age. It does not matter if you call it a social skill or a technological skill, the fact remains that there are people who know how to communicate effectively via social media, and those who don't, and just because you are comfortable in the latter category does not mean your daughter will be too.

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