Virtual Communication Can Be Tricky. What happens When Every Part of Your Life Depends on It?

An advertising executive presents a marketing plan via Zoom to her boss and colleagues, hoping her kids are still watching Frozen on Netflix. A couple argues over bandwidth requirements for their dueling videoconferences, while their teenager searches for protective gloves on Amazon.

This is the new normal—virtual communication, 24 hours a day—for who knows how long during the COVID-19 crisis. Work is at home. School is at home. Date night is at home. Even healthcare may be confined to the home. We are all attempting to accommodate our emotional, entertainment, educational, and health needs in one virtual place. Excuse the bad pun, but this feels virtually impossible.

What is happening now is unprecedented. Communication researchers call the practice of engaging in multiple conversations simultaneously “multicommunication.” Even before the pandemic, the practice of multicommunicating had profoundly changed how we are socially present, but this is likely to further change with the current crisis.

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