Calendar Books by Allen James' reading for June 4th from "The Journey: A
Calendar Book"..."Text the ones about whom you care about keeping in
contact" (James, 2012).
Texting has, in many ways, made communication easier by helping people avoid long, unpl...easant phone conversations and making a quick “Hello” much easier. According to the Pew Research Center, 72% of teenagers text regularly, and one in three sends more than 100 texts per day. Clearly, texting is the preferred method of communication among young people, and the trend is moving upward toward adults, who are also texting much more frequently. While texting hasn’t been around long enough for researchers to study its long-term effects on communication, there is circumstantial evidence it is rapidly altering the ways people communicate with one another both via text and in person.
People keep talking about how little time they have and how they can’t live without their cell phones; but, if you simply watch people on the street, you’ll see cell phone calling and texting has become an addiction. How can you tell?
Consider the constant chatter – one call after another or the constant texting – an hour long trip in the passenger seat while on a extended trip is completely consumed by texting! Friends become like an estranged couple sitting in a restaurant, saying not a word throughout their meal. And it’s not just one person, it’s not only a certain age group – it’s amazing how one gadget which was suppose to save time is actually eating up people’s time at an incredible rate!
Is it connecting? Perhaps. At some level, it’s connecting; at another level it’s just another way to shut out the world. Gauge the reactions – if the cell phone dies, there are two reactions:
“I’m lost” look – what am I going to do with myself now?
Anger – a raging look appears on their faces and they become very agitated
It doesn’t take a psychiatrist or psychologist to understand the reaction.
Although texting is a useful form of communication, people are blatantly turning away from traditional means of communication and taking the simpler-less emotionally involved-route and choosing to send text rather than talk to a real person. A live interaction, where tone, diction, and rhetoric can be understood so much more than by a text. A teenage boy would much rather flirt and have a DTR over texting instead of in person. The same guy 20 years ago may not have had the luxury of texting would have had to learn to face his fears of rejection or failure and call up the girl and ask the difficult questions.
Texting takes away fear, and all you have left are those who perhaps may be more emotionally immature and overly confident in private, but severely lacking in the kind of self confidence it takes to talk to someone live. Taking the dating scenario out of the equation, people say things quicker without the reaction of the other person to give them emotional cues needed to re-evaluate what they are going to say before it comes out wrong. Texting cuts out nonverbal communication. Unfortunately. Texting curtails the human experience of reading people, of language, of existing in an authentic and genuine relationship. It will be interesting what texting will effect in the next 20 years as far as divorce rates. Those would be stats worth evaluating.
Text the ones about whom you care about keeping in contact....and watch your time texting diminish and your time in a worth while activity increase.
Keep looking up. : ) AJ
Texting has, in many ways, made communication easier by helping people avoid long, unpl...easant phone conversations and making a quick “Hello” much easier. According to the Pew Research Center, 72% of teenagers text regularly, and one in three sends more than 100 texts per day. Clearly, texting is the preferred method of communication among young people, and the trend is moving upward toward adults, who are also texting much more frequently. While texting hasn’t been around long enough for researchers to study its long-term effects on communication, there is circumstantial evidence it is rapidly altering the ways people communicate with one another both via text and in person.
People keep talking about how little time they have and how they can’t live without their cell phones; but, if you simply watch people on the street, you’ll see cell phone calling and texting has become an addiction. How can you tell?
Consider the constant chatter – one call after another or the constant texting – an hour long trip in the passenger seat while on a extended trip is completely consumed by texting! Friends become like an estranged couple sitting in a restaurant, saying not a word throughout their meal. And it’s not just one person, it’s not only a certain age group – it’s amazing how one gadget which was suppose to save time is actually eating up people’s time at an incredible rate!
Is it connecting? Perhaps. At some level, it’s connecting; at another level it’s just another way to shut out the world. Gauge the reactions – if the cell phone dies, there are two reactions:
“I’m lost” look – what am I going to do with myself now?
Anger – a raging look appears on their faces and they become very agitated
It doesn’t take a psychiatrist or psychologist to understand the reaction.
Although texting is a useful form of communication, people are blatantly turning away from traditional means of communication and taking the simpler-less emotionally involved-route and choosing to send text rather than talk to a real person. A live interaction, where tone, diction, and rhetoric can be understood so much more than by a text. A teenage boy would much rather flirt and have a DTR over texting instead of in person. The same guy 20 years ago may not have had the luxury of texting would have had to learn to face his fears of rejection or failure and call up the girl and ask the difficult questions.
Texting takes away fear, and all you have left are those who perhaps may be more emotionally immature and overly confident in private, but severely lacking in the kind of self confidence it takes to talk to someone live. Taking the dating scenario out of the equation, people say things quicker without the reaction of the other person to give them emotional cues needed to re-evaluate what they are going to say before it comes out wrong. Texting cuts out nonverbal communication. Unfortunately. Texting curtails the human experience of reading people, of language, of existing in an authentic and genuine relationship. It will be interesting what texting will effect in the next 20 years as far as divorce rates. Those would be stats worth evaluating.
Text the ones about whom you care about keeping in contact....and watch your time texting diminish and your time in a worth while activity increase.
Keep looking up. : ) AJ
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