It seems like most people under the age of 30 hesitate to use phones for their original purpose: Talking. Old, close friends sometimes call to catch up, and most people will call someone to track them down if they're late for something or if it's an emergency. But just to chat? To share good news? To say hello, good morning, or good night? The majority of my communication with my friends has always been through text, be it through instant messaging and online group chats when the Internet was young to the omnipresent Facebook Messenger and SMS stream that comes into my smartphone now.
This Gallup poll indicates that "texting is the most frequently used form of communication among Americans younger than 50," and that "the use of social media to communicate is in the top four among those aged 18 to 29, but its use drops off significantly among those 30 or older."
People of all ages criticize this trend, believing texting or instant messaging to be more detached and insincere forms of communication, and I agree — to a point. The cadence and tone of somebody's voice, the sound of actual laughter, the ease of reading sarcasm and ambiguity, many facets of speech that are separate from the words we say are lost in the voice-to-text transition. And then there are innumerable subtle bodily signals that both have lost from face-to-face conversation. There is something slightly but nonetheless inherently less human about texting. Perhaps in the same way a gun is less intimate than a sword, it can be easier to pull the trigger on an impulsive text message. It can be easier to hurt someone's feelings, directly or accidentally. It can be easier to ask somebody out or to ask somebody for sex. It's easy to flirt, and it's easy to play games with somebody. Missed class notes are much less nerve-wracking to ask for, but also you kind of seem like a loser. Nowadays we even make friends through text — I have close friends whom I got to know by staying up until the wee hours of the night texting back and forth about random stuff. But does that make the friendship less valid?
An overlooked benefit of text is the capacity for editing, for choosing one's words more carefully than is possible when speaking extemporaneously. I've started arguments over text that wouldn't have otherwise happened, but I've also finished them with the sort of immaculately crafted mic drop, concession, or even apology that I couldn't have done without time to process. More time to think can often be beneficial; I'd imagine some of those friendship-building conversations may have created a stronger immediate connection had they been in person, but I also think that we likely shared plenty of thoughts and feelings that would not have come through without the measure of care/paranoia that comes from choosing one's words and seeing them stare back before hitting "send."
Perhaps calling and texting aren't necessarily enemies or replacements for one another, but act as different tools for different needs. I've embraced the long phone call for catching up with out-of-touch friends and relatives, but I also love texting for both quick-and-dirty last-second planning and having more substantial conversations that don't necessarily need to happen out loud. I implore young people to use their actual voices more often, but I also hope that our parents and grandparents will become slightly less critical with time. If they didn't have to call people's home phones and send letters, you can bet they wouldn't have!
