Does commenting on Reddit posts improve your social skills?

33 comments

1. Not at all lmao.

2. Not really it just helps you feel more sociable tbh

3. No.

4. Honestly, no. As long as you don’t feel the discomfort associated with socialising, you’re not really ‘improving’

5. I feel like it helps me. To open up, organize my thoughts into sentences, etc. I also see what things get downvoted hard and why (learn what not to say in certain contexts).. (tho I had a large brain tumor and had a stroke during the surgery to remove it, so my brain needs and benefits from low-friction practice like this). TLDR; I think it could help but only on a minor, subtle level

6. Even if it did, it probably can never replace actually talking to people directly.

7. Quite the opposite.

8. No

9. Yeah I use it to practice putting my thoughts into words.

10. Nah

11. Definitely not lol

12. Nope. I would also push back against folks who keep looking for an online social group or a discord for practicing social skills.

    There’s really no substitute for interacting with people face to face where you get the full information of body language and have to deal with actual messy human beings who don’t always behave predictably in real time.

13. As your saying it can be good for putting your thoughts into words and sorting them out this way. This may help in some minor ways when later socializing. But when it comes to improving your social skills, you have to actually talk to people. Becouse reddit comments and post has nothing to do with how socializing works in the real world.

14. It’s good for practicing reading and writing comprehension. Maybe it can be useful for texting conversations. But the utter lack of body language and inflection is really limiting. In real life you have a lot more tools at your disposal to communicate what you are really feeling, intentionally or not.

15. Yes it does. Its a great way to do that if you go into it meaning to learn something specific from your interactions. I’ve done it and I’ve learned a lot about wording and reactions of people and mostly how to take negative comments and respond or not respond to them. You can learn a lot. This is not the same as in person social skills but for things like speaking up in a crowd if that makes you nervous online then learning to do it with confidence online first is a good starting point. Learning to phrase things clearly through practice in comments helps to be able to pull those ideas to mind in person rather than feel unprepared to discuss things because you’ve not done it much. There are many ways you can teach yourself skills that will help you in learning other in person skills.

16. In moderation, maybe. But it’ll only help if you set an intention to improve your social skills. Terminally online people are terminally online for a reason. Commenting online doesn’t rly do much, first off anonymity rids you of any accountability or responsibility and makes it hard to empathize. Secondly without face to face interaction, which is where most of us here struggle with- it’s really not anything.

    However like others have said, I think it can help organizing thoughts and speaking/commenting with intention. Or if you’re like me and don’t rly know “myself” yet very well, it can help in introspection.

17. Online communication skills rarely transfer into real life very well.

18. Absolutely not

19. No. Because you have all the time in the world to answer and think.

    In real life its split second decisions.

20. Nope. Go out and try expressing your opinions to people in real life, you’ll improve much faster.

21. I think it can be beneficial. You can try out new things before taking it to the real world.

22. I only comment when I’m high as fuck, so I wouldn’t know

23. Idk for me my biggest hurdle socially is not really believing that anyone wants to hear what I have to say, so Reddit has been good for me in that it helps me practice inserting myself into a larger conversation lol and it’s helpful when people respond ya know??

24. Conversational skills? Probably

    Social skills? Most certainly not

25. Yes it does. For those with social anxiety (myself included) it is a safer way to explore interacting and being courageous to speak your mind. If you don’t have social anxiety, thank goodness! But you cannot really appreciate how it feels to battle your stifling fears and put yourself out there even on reddit.

26. It hurts your social skills.

27. I feel like in certain subs it improves your ability to articulate opinions because you can’t just say anything without being able to back up your statements with reason or data. But I don’t know about social skills, I think it depends where you’re at currently. For someone who is scared of criticism or making mistakes, reddit could definitely be a training ground for that part. But the actual skill of talking to people and connecting with them, that would probably require more in person interactions

28. It’s kind of like conversation easy mode, but even then it’s not really a conversation because it’s more than likely that you’re literally just talking into a void with your most common feedback being anonymous upvotes.

    You also have plenty of time to craft exactly what response you want (I’ve restructured/changed this comment like 5 times at this point) so there’s no “pressure” to figure out what you want to say without the fear of an awkward pause.

    I don’t think it’s better than face-to-face conversations, but if you struggle with any of the anxieties that can come with communicating with other people it might be a good place to start. Just know a lot of people don’t type the way they talk.

29. Writing yes. Thicker skin I’m not so sure about.

30. This is almost like saying, “Does lifting weights grow your muscles or damage them?” It depends on what you’re eating, how you’re recovering, how you’re training etc… Likewise with your social skills and commenting on Reddit I think. It very much depends on your mind, your emotional state and what you feed it and how you let it recover and whether or not you socialize outside of Reddit, etc…

    I think Reddit can teach us a lot about people who are different than us and we can begin to empathize and understand these people and this can be tremendously helpful socially.

31. Kinda, it can help you get a bit more acclimated to interacting with others without having to straight up talk to someone face to face to face, but overall you shouldn’t rely on it as your main go to

32. You can spend however long you like writing a post or comment online. But a conversation in real life will leave you in the dust if you linger mentally on how to reply to someone.

33. No