Did it ever take hours or even days for someone to reply to your text? Did you ever wanna make plans with your friends so you text them in a group chat but none of them answer? Have you ever gotten into a fight with someone via text all because of miscommunication? Yes, emojis have fixed that confusion of emotions a bit, but it will never compare to hearing the hurt, the excitement, or the tone of someone's voice when talking on the phone.
We've lost the appreciation of hearing a person's voice and the effect of this is that friendships aren't as meaningful or open as they were prior to the invention of texting.
Texting is a great thing- when you wanna ask a quick question or stating, "I'm on my way" when meeting someone somewhere. Texting is not a great thing for getting to know someone, getting to know how they react to certain things, and hearing the emotion in their voice when they're talking about something they're passionate about, something that they need to get off their chest, or hearing them cry over a breakup or the bad day they had.
My mother always tells me about how strong her relationships are because she catches up with everyone on the phone and hears their voices. Because she spoke to her friends on the phone when she was younger, she still has the strong bonds she made throughout her adolescence.
Throughout middle school and high school, there were times where I would be talking to one of my friends via text or social media and someone would say something that was taken in a different sense and it would start an argument- someone would make a sarcastic comment and it would be taken in a literal sense, someone would get offended and the brawl would begin.
Had we spoken on the phone, it would have probably ended in laughter. I would be in tears because I thought my friends didn't wanna hang out with me because they wouldn't text me back. My mom would force me to call them, have a conversation with them and ask to hang out.
I used to think that calling my friends was weird and they'd think that I'm weird, but talking on the phone is so much more effective. Calling people and hearing their voice after a couple of days or weeks is something texting can never replace.
I knew that a part of this generation hit rock bottom in the communication department when I saw a tweet that said:
This tweet is very silly, not only because no one wants to take the time and write a long text and then have someone read it, but because why wouldn't you want the person hearing your tone while telling the stories? Wouldn't you want to hear the emotions in their voice that the person feels while telling the story?
As a millennial, I want to change how we communicate when we aren't with our friends. Quite frankly, I am sick of the miscommunication and the lack of emotion that goes along with texting and I would be more than happy to go back to calling.
