Cynthia, 30, does not like small talk or, as they have been known all her life, inconsequential elevator conversations. This summer, the star theme has been heat waves. Every time he walked his dogs and crossed paths with a neighbor, conversation was inevitable, much to his chagrin. “From time to time I meet some other neighbor who is also walking his pets and, since the dogs approach to say hello, there is no other choice but to do the same”, he regrets.
Because they are banal conversations, they may seem simple. However, there are people who find them difficult. Social media is full of videos on this topic.
“I hate this kind of conversation,” emphasizes Cynthia. For her, it’s more of a generational issue. He believes that the reluctance to interact physically with strangers, and especially to talk about banalities, is quite widespread among younger people.
Gemma González, 20, explains that when she sees that she is going to screw with a neighbor, she is ashamed. She explains that it bothers her when she is looking at her cell phone and someone she doesn’t know interrupts her to talk to her. González also believes that it is a question of age, because when she goes for a walk with her grandmother she knows the lives of all the neighbors.
So people don’t communicate like they used to? For Juan Manuel Aguado, professor of Communication and specialist in digital media, it is not that these kinds of conversations are disappearing, but that they have moved to other digital spaces, and small talks take place online and not in a physical place.
“This is complemented by the fact that the mobile phone is a magnificent shield to create a bubble of privacy in public spaces”, explains Aguado. The simple gesture of lowering their head makes it easier for people who do so to isolate themselves from the physical context in which they are and to socialize in an online context, this professor indicates.
Alejandro Martínez is not yet 30 and believes that younger people need an explicit agreement to approach strangers or hook up. “It’s like talking to a person without their consent is frowned upon because you think you’re violating their privacy,” he says.
If previously private behaviors were related to private spaces and public behaviors to public spaces, studies in 2009 began to point to a paradigm shift, explains Aguado. “It wasn’t the space that determined the kind of behavior, but whether or not you were known. Then one could have private behaviors in public spaces as long as anonymity was guaranteed and, if there was no anonymity, then there were public behaviors,” he says.
Aguado explains that the use of the mobile phone has entered into a process that began decades ago in the big cities. “It is the formalization of social life. You no longer relate to a person of flesh and blood, but to someone who is a formal entity. Therefore, we do not relate as people as such, but a functional link of user or customer, among others, is established.
In a 2021 study, the American Psychological Association explained that people benefit from deep and meaningful conversations that help us forge connections. However, many times these conversations are limited to small talk for fear of being intrusive. On the other hand, the University of Wellington argues in another study that elevator conversations are important because they “help to lubricate communication”.
In a society in which even the last word seems to have to be useful, a movement against small talk has been born. Especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, meetings are held where only interesting topics can be discussed.
Aguado believes that one should not be apocalyptic. Before, when community was more important, there were very close ties between people, but also little intimacy. Now there is more freedom of choice, but the feeling of loneliness is also growing. “Other socializing spaces are emerging”, he says. Thus, “we already supply this social need we have, but in a different way”, he concludes.
