We
live in a culture that loves to text. In truth, I like to text - it is
fast, gets to the point and I don’t have to deal with all the
“formalities”
of the phone call. We speed through the saying “bye” two or three times, the small talk
and all the other things that go along with it. There are times a phone
call is a must, just as there are other times a face to face meeting is must...and still
other times through the day that text is
just fitting. But, as parents we must be aware and we must teach our
children that I can’t “do life" with someone by text. As people
of God we need more interaction with each other than just by text: we need to see one another,
we need to read facial expressions, we need
to be able to tell if something is going wrong or right. There are
things conveyed in a conversation, voice inflections, looks, even humor
can not be conveyed as easily through text. Sending a text letting
someone know you are praying for them is okay to do
some times, but actually praying with them is much better. I can’t do
Matthew 18 by text: I can’t biblically confront through a text as this
takes grace, relationship, concern, and none of these an be displayed through
at text. Below is an article by CNN (who is by
no means a bastion of biblical literacy) which should be a warning sign
to us as parents and should cause us to think through how to prepare
them to “do life” not simply in this world, but in the body of Christ.
(CNN)
--
You do not want to talk to me on the phone. How do I know? Because I
don't want to talk to you on the phone. Nothing personal, I just can't
stand the thing.
I
find it intrusive and somehow presumptuous. It sounds off insolently
whenever it chooses and expects me to drop whatever I'm
doing and, well, engage. With others! When I absolutely must, I take
the call, but I don't do a very good job of concealing my displeasure. A
close family member once offered his opinion that I exhibit the phone
manners of a goat, then promptly withdrew the
charge — out of fairness to goats.
So
it was with profound relief that I embraced the arrival of e-mail and,
later, texting. They meant a conversation I could control
— utterly. I get to say exactly what I want exactly when I want to say
it. It consumes no more time than I want it to and, to a much greater
degree than is possible with a phone call, I get to decide if it takes
place at all. That might make me misanthropic.
It surely makes me a crank. But it doesn't make me unusual.
The
telephone call is a dying institution. The number of text messages sent
monthly in the U.S. exploded from 14 billion in 2000
to 188 billion in 2010, according to a Pew Institute survey, and the
trend shows no signs of abating. Not all of that growth has come out of
the hide of old-fashioned phoning, but it is clearly taking a bite —
particularly among the young.
Americans ages 18-29 send and receive an average of nearly 88 text messages per day, compared to 17 phone calls. The numbers
change as we get older, with the overall frequency
of all communication declining, but even in the 65 and over group,
daily texting still edges calling 4.7 to 3.8. In
the TIME mobility poll, 32% of all respondents said they'd rather
communicate by text than phone, even with people they know very well.
This is truer still in the workplace, where communication is between
colleagues who are often not friends at all. "No more
trying to find time to call and chit-chat," is how one poll respondent
described the business appeal of texting over talking.
The
problem, of course, is what's lost when that chit-chat goes.
Developmental psychologists studying the impact of texting worry
especially about young people, not just because kids are such
promiscuous users of the technology, but because their interpersonal
skills — such as they are — have not yet fully formed. Most adults were
fixed social quantities when they first got their hands
on a text-capable mobile device, and while their ability to have a
face-to-face conversation may have eroded in recent years, it's pretty
well locked in. Not so with teens. As TIME has
reported previously,
MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle is one of the leading researchers
looking into the effects of texting on interpersonal development.
Turkle believes that having a conversation with another person teaches
kids to, in effect, have a conversation with themselves — to think and
reason and self-reflect. "That particular skill
is a bedrock of development," she told me.
Turkle
cites the texted apology — or what she calls "saying 'I'm sorry' and
hitting send" — as a vivid example of what's lost
when we type instead of speak. "A full-scale apology means I know I've
hurt you, I get to see that in your eyes," she says. "You get to see
that I'm uncomfortable, and with that, the compassion response kicks in.
There are many steps and they're all bypassed
when we text." When the apology takes place over the phone rather than
in person, the visual cues are lost, of course, but the voice — and the
sense of hurt and contrition it can convey — is preserved.
Part of the appeal of texting in these situations is that it's less painful — but the pain is the point. "The complexity and
messiness of human communication gets shortchanged," Turkle says. "Those things are what lead to better relationships."
Habitual
texters may not only cheat their existing relationships, they can also
limit their ability to form future ones since
they don't get to practice the art of interpreting nonverbal visual
cues. There's a reason it's so easy to lie to small kids ("Santa really,
truly did bring those presents") and that's because they're functional
illiterates when it comes to reading inflection
and facial expressions. As with real reading, the ability to comprehend
subtlety and complexity comes only with time and a lot of experience.
If you don't adequately acquire those skills, moving out into the real
world of real people can actually become quite
scary. "I talk to kids and they describe their fear of conversation,"
says Turkle. "An 18-year-old I interviewed recently said, 'Someday, but
certainly not now, I want to learn to have a conversation.'"
Adults
are much less likely to be so conversation-phobic, but they do become
conversation-avoidant — mostly because it's easier.
Texting an obligatory birthday greeting means you don't have to fake an
enthusiasm you're not really feeling. Texting a friend to see what time
a party starts means you don't also have to ask "How are you?" and,
worse, get an answer.
The text message is clearly here to stay and even the most zealous phone partisans don't
recommend
avoiding it entirely. But mix it up some — maybe even throw in a little
Skyping or Facetime so that when you finally
do make a call you're actually seeing and interacting with another
person. Too much texting, Turkle warns, amounts to a life of "hiding in
plain sight."
