I have a tendency to over-think things.

I never realized how much I read into things until this past year. In a candid conversation with a friend I translated all of the things he said to me and what I actually heard. Following this conversation he referred to me as slightly neurotic and I  really can’t argue with that.

A few weeks ago I was reading about the way people communicate in emails and it got me thinking…

I grew up with the internet.

The first time I flirted with a boy? Yahoo chat rooms. (Go ahead, judge me) The first time I got asked out on a date? MSN messenger. How did I make plans with friends on the weekend? AIM. I grew up learning how to read virtual body language and taking social cues from the way people wrote, the speed of response and the length of response.  Picture me, at the age of fourteen, hunched over my computer trying to figure out if that well placed “….” was a cue for me to say something smart, or if I had confused them, or if they were nervous, or what the hell “….” was supposed to mean.

When I started using the internet for professional reasons I began communicating with people from different generations. Meaning that many of these people didn’t grow up on MSN messenger and weren’t emailing when they were fifteen years old and their style of communicating through text was incredibly different from mine.

So I spent my days trying to decide if their shortened response was because they were annoyed, or busy or if they just hated emailing. I have spent far too much time stressing over whether or not their strategically placed exclamation mark was a sign of excitement or anger.

Needless to say I have been fascinated with the way that people communicate online for far too long. Which makes me wonder how much the way we communicate via email and IM will change as new generations enter the workforce? Studies show that Gen Z will take communicating via instant messenger over email any day, which makes me wonder how inter-office communication will evolve in the next decade.

What do you think?

How do you approach virtual body language?

Do you stress over the way you respond to emails and the responses you receive?

Am I the only one?