Yesterday I got an unexpected call. It was a group FaceTime from a few old friends. They were celebrating Cinco de Mayo, quarantine-style of course, and wanted me to join them. There were five of us. We live in four different states in three different time zones. We seldom see each other face to face: we’re all in the same place once every couple of years, if we’re lucky, because of the planning and travel required.

Today I reflected on the call. We have a regular group text, so we’re connected. We call each other for one-to-one conversations too. Even with all this, FaceTime enhanced our communication. Why?

Here’s my theory. Throughout history, most of us have communicated using our

• voice,
• hearing, and
• eyesight.

Text messages engage only our eyesight, and only in a limited way—we can look only at words, not faces. Tone, humor, and other subtleties are difficult to convey, though emoji help.

Phone calls let us use our hearing and voice. Humor, tone, and mood are more easily understood. But calls don’t require sight and, like texts, don’t allow us to communicate through body language (for example, facial expressions).

FaceTime and other video platforms allow us to communicate verbally and nonverbally. Tone, humor, mood, and body language all have a good chance of being understood.

I think video is powerful because it engages our voice, hearing, and eyesight. It’s the next best thing to communicating in person. Using all three just feels more natural.

Video isn’t new. FaceTime, Zoom, WebEx, Houseparty, and others have been around for years. But use of these tools is now soaring. People of all ages who once relied on traditional phone calls and in-person communication are now embracing video.

We’ve seen rapid-fire mass adoption because the pandemic is keeping people apart. Restrictions on in-person communication have created a void, and video-based tools are filling it. They allow us to communicate in the way that feels most natural—using our voice, hearing, and eyesight.

Face-to-face communication is irreplaceable, but video will play a much larger role in people’s lives from now on because we’ve been compelled to get used to it. I predict that entrepreneurs with experience in video or ideas about how to enhance video communication will be highly sought-after by investors and venture capitalists.

How do you see communication evolving?