An increasingly amount of one-on-one communication is no longer face to face, but rather via email or its special-needs cousin, texting. The proliferation of smart phones and pads have made it very easy for most of us to depersonalize one-on-one communication by using pure text. Back in the day, before phones were everywhere, professionals needed to find each other physically to discuss plans, conflicts, and solutions. With the widespread use of telephones in the 1940's and 50's face-to-face was replaced with picking up the phone and letting your fingers do the walking. Our body language is hidden on a telephone conversation, but our subtle verbal cues and sighs at least convey or betray our true feelings.
The age of text communication not only takes on more degree apart from one another by filtering out the verbal and non-verbal, but it allows for us to take that much less responsibility for what we communicate. This high-tech / low brains approach to communication has dulled many of our perceptions of how ineffective our communication has become. Teens nowadays are the worst when it comes to stunted communication skill. The use of text messaging has completely obliterated any semblance of intelligence. You can find this in abbreviated words and phrases such as lol, lmao, brb,OMG!, btw, cys, cyl or worse yet, the complete degradation of grammar and spelling.
Have you ever checked your kids' cell phones? I certainly have. Aside from all of the garbage that they can download, it is a polluted river of worthless information, mostly about how stupid everything and everybody is. Meanwhile, I can hardly even get my kids to answer a call. They simply text me back "WDYW" (what do you want?). Ugh!
I had always used text messaging to get quick information from my wife such as when we were going to meet, or if there was anything I could pick up on my way home. Now, near strangers are text messaging me if I leave my cell number on a advertisement for a house I am renting. Finally, I texted them back "If you are interested, please call." No dice, no call, no reply . . . . .no communication. I called that stranger's bluff, and in the end they weren't serious, and neither was I.
Somehow we must reassess the value of quality communication. The benefits of speaking to someone face-to-face or on the telephone far outweigh the time savings and banality of simply texting our lives away. My dear Aunt Judy always finds my typos on this blog, but at least she reads my posts and comments constructively. I will take a correction, in order to make an improvement; rather than let my brain die as I a like walk around as a zombie with my head down looking at my phone, punching away.
Nuff said, I have a text coming in.
Thank goodness! We need more talk about how debilitating and rude texting can be. One of the things I find most offensive is someone's inability to stay in a face-to-face conversation because they are constantly checking their incoming texts... and even worse, replying to them as I stand there! I do not text at all and I have call waiting but only use it if an emergency is expected or my son is beeping in (a potential emergency since he rarely calls now that he's in college). Call me old fashioned but I long for the days when we weren't at the constant beck and call of electronic devices.
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