Digital communication has become the dominant form of communication for most young people, and it has a structural problem: it strips out most of the signals that carry emotional meaning. No facial expressions. No vocal tone. No body language. What remains are words and punctuation, and people are remarkably bad at decoding emotional intent from words alone. Research consistently shows that people overestimate how well they communicate through text and messages, and that receivers misread tone as more negative than intended. This is compounded by what psychologists call negativity bias: when meaning is ambiguous, people tend to interpret it in the most threatening way available. A short reply intended as neutral gets read as cold or dismissive. A message with no punctuation gets read as terse or annoyed. An unanswered message gets read as deliberate ignoring. The practical response is not to abandon digital communication but to be far more deliberate about it. Assume your tone is invisible, and compensate. Err on the side of warmth. Be explicit about intent when discussing something sensitive. When a conversation becomes difficult in a digital channel, recognise that this is often a structural problem with the medium itself and move it to a voice or face-to-face conversation. Choosing the right medium for the message is itself a communication skill.