The idea of waiting until a certain to express to someone how much he or she means to you (birthday, Valentine’s Day, mother’s/father’s day, etc) has always seemed silly to me. These feeling should be expressed everyday, although it would not always be verbal. There are two problems that most people face: expressing love and constantly seeking the assurance of being loved. The second problem comes mainly due to the the existence of the first problem: in general, people are bad at showing others that they value their time and friendship.
The first factor that contributes to this problem is the cell phone. Texting has become so popular, especially among teenagers, that it has replaced calling and verbal confrontation in most situations. People just always text. Unfortunately, when someone texts someone else while engaged in a verbal conversation with another, it makes that person feel less important because the texter’s attention is diverted. Sometimes, it seems as though people choose to respond to a text while in a conversation not because the text or sender is more important, but because it is a text message, and text messages get priority over actual conversations. Does it really make sense to take your attention off the person to whom you are speaking to answer a text message from someone who may or may not have something as important to say? It seems that when a message is delivered via text, the text message gets an extra +1 and makes us want to respond to it. Why? It may be an immediate desire thing: the sender took time to write a message and send it to me, it must be important. A clear minded individual, however, would see that the quality of the sender’s attention would be higher if he or she had made the message a phone call instead.
The lack of phone calls is also another problem. There was a study that showed that when normal people listen to music, they act most positively to voice, then drums, then everything else. It makes sense; speaking and beating stuff are two things that we are naturally able to do, and the reason that we react more positively to voice than drums is because we understand the lyrics (when in a familiar language). Similarly, there is better rapport made in verbal communication compared to texted based. Texting is too informal and distant. It is also very inefficient.
People who are not good with direct, verbal conversation prefer texting. However, the ability to socialize verbally is important, and avoiding having to do it does not make it better. So, texting seems to create this paradox of contributing to feelings of isolation (due to poor social skills) while seemingly bringing more people together (due to being able to distantly keep in touch with many people).
There is also no way how I could see anyone would prefer a 3 hour texting conversation over a 30 minute verb conversation about the same subject. No matter how quickly you can type, you can speak faster and more clearly.
In addition to contributing to poor social skills, something else that increases isolation is when others watch you text. Most people don’t ever “sit by themselves” anymore. Whether texting or not, they will be constantly checking their phones. Maybe this is just me, but if you’re on the phone, then you’re busy, and I wouldn’t want to bother you. I eat by myself all the time. I watch other people eat by themselves, and I consider joining them, but then I see them take their phones out. They’re obviously doing something, but it’s not enjoying lunch, and they’re not going to enjoy lunch with me if I intrude on that.
It also really annoys me when people bring their phones to track practice and keeps using them when not running (during breaks, etc). Obviously, track practice is for running. That should be the focus. Not making plans for the night or stupid drama. (Focus and priorities – a topic for another time.)
SMS stands for “short messaging service.” When used correctly, ie. the way it was meant to be used, it is actually more efficient than phone calls. “Be there in 5,” or “Are you going to practice?” work well as text messages. Pages and pages of abbreviated words is not efficient. In fact, on Google Voice, if you try to send a SMS past 6 pages (I believe), instead of telling you how many pages you have, it just says, “Really?” See, even Google agrees with me.
The only reason I text, and I’m ashamed to admit it, is because mostly everyone else does. I plan to change that, although it probably won’t work well considering how well our generation deals with things outside of the norm.
