Video vs. Face-to-Face

• Trends
• February 27, 2015
• by Merrie Spaeth

If you’re a regular reader or have been to any of our seminars, you know we are the apostles of video and learning to speak to audiences through a camera. However, I came across a sobering reminder of the limits of video in a January National Geographic article.

Research indicates that children’s brains are stimulated and develop based, in large part, on how much their parents talk to them. The article focused on the difference in interactions between lower-income families and more affluent families, finding the latter had extended conversations about a wide variety of topics.

The finding that rocked me compared in-person conversations with exposure to words and topics on television, internet, smartphones etc. Researchers predicted that kids who see and hear verbal interaction digitally would develop as the kids who interacted in-person with their parents. Not so.

The children who engaged in “human interaction” made progress but the kids who only watched video or listened to audio “showed no progress whatsoever.” The lead researcher Dr. Patricia Kuhl wrote she was “blown away.” I was, too.

Dr. Kuhl presented the idea that language between two people has an emotional component, which video removes. I think she’s right. Of course, on the bright side, we’ve argued for years that it’s important to engage and equip employees and customers to talk – yes, one-on-one – to people and there is no replacing that.