This article was automatically translated from the original Turkish version.
You turn on the screen, and the person across from you is there. They are smiling, speaking, and behind them you can see a corner of their kitchen. You see their face, you hear their voice. But is this truly face-to-face contact?
The answer may seem at first glance to be "of course not", but the matter is not that simple.
In video calls, we never actually make eye contact. When we look into the eyes of the person across from us, we are not looking at the camera; when we look at the camera, we are not seeing their face. Thus, that famous "eye contact" is technically impossible. Our brains notice this, but cannot name it; this is one reason we feel a faint sense of dissatisfaction after the conversation ends.
Then there is the body. We see only the upper part, above the shoulders. The posture of the hands, the impatient sway of a foot, one person leaning forward while the other speaks—these details, which convey far more than words, lie outside the frame.
Görüntülü Görüşmeyi Temsil Eden Görsel (Yapay Zeka İle Oluşturulmuştur)
There is also the question of space. Face-to-face meeting is, in fact, sharing the same air: the same smell of coffee, the same noise from the street, two hands reaching across the same table. A shared environment creates a bond independent of the conversation itself. On screen, everyone sits in their own world; the only thing they share is time.
And silence. When meeting face to face, silence is comforting. On screen, silence creates tension: "Are they frozen? Did the connection drop? Did I say something wrong?" The natural pauses in conversation become sources of anxiety.
Yet it would be unfair to dismiss video calls as "fake connection". For a grandmother who sees her grandchild only once a year, that face on the screen means more than any letter or phone call. A half-hour weekly call with a friend abroad is precisely what keeps that relationship alive.
It can even be argued that video calls make certain things easier. Sometimes, initiating a difficult topic or uttering a vulnerable sentence becomes possible thanks to the small distance the screen provides. For shy people, the camera is a thin curtain behind which they can hide.
Perhaps the question is wrongly framed: asking "Is it face to face?" implies viewing video calls not as their own phenomenon, but merely as an inferior copy of real interaction. Yet the telephone never replaced face-to-face contact either, and no one expected it to. It was a distinct form of connection, with its own rules and possibilities.
Video calls are the same. They do not replace, but they do fill a gap. Only when we stop seeing them as a substitute do they truly become useful: as a unique, flawed yet valuable form of closeness that shortens distance.
After all, what matters is not where the meeting takes place, but whether the person across from you is truly there. Some people sit at the same table but are elsewhere. Others stand right in front of you, a thousand kilometers away, through a tiny screen.
