There’s that well known, distressing catalyst of the 21st century which has accelerated a worldwide trend of the dilution meaningful social discourse, for all nationalities and social spectra. What’s worse, its addictive design allows for its perpetuity without much influence from the ruling class.
The advent of the smart phone and the worldwide addiction to internet social media is bringing on the demise of all that which we hold dear. Social media commentary and texting have replaced a majority of former face to face or voice to voice social contracts and dialogues, which has resulted in a society far more prone to divisiveness and aggression. Social media’s addictive qualities include a perceived shelter of anonymity, a propensity for immediate self-gratification, and an abundance of content shaped by attention deficits. It has replaced the original bad boy of mind-numbing virtual distraction, television, which certainly had a significant part to play in the twentieth century’s rise of watered-down thought.
Video content triumphed over print content some time ago because its medium is easier for our visually oriented monkey brains to process. Reading requires advanced cognition and a concerted effort to interpret written language into digestible thought formats for both learning and entertainment. Sadly, Americans are living in a largely post-literate culture.
A Pew Research Center poll in 2019 showed about a quarter of Americans hadn’t read a single book over the prior 12 months.
Another poll conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed Americans spend on average about 15 minutes a day reading for personal interest, be it in print or electronic. That’s opposed to, remember, those average four hours a day of watching television.
Regarding smart phone texting, the 21st century’s preferred format of communication has forced a hostile takeover of the former person-to-person medium of telephones. The initial draws of texting were obvious. It’s quick, it cuts to the chase, and gets to the point for an ever on the move American society, yet more obvious, it relinquishes necessary nuances, tones, and feelings usually required for successful interpersonal interaction.
More sobering statistics from the Pew Research Center: 33% of all American adults prefer texting over any other forms of communication including in person face to face conversation. That number jumps to 77% for Generation Z.
One third of all adults prefer texting to calling.
Americans average about 5 hours a day of smart phone usage, a third of which is comprised of texting others for business or personal intents.
This massive monkey on our collective back is a lazy, passive communication that removes the human factor entirely, doing away with facial expressions, voice inflections, and general non-verbal cues that were taken for granted back in the days before the onset of cellular technologies.
It’s a foregone conclusion the increased numbers in cyber-based communications like texting or Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp give the appearance we’re more connected than ever, when the exact opposite is true, as messaging allows us to avoid the messy, oozing, prickly, mushy, give and take of in-person communication.
In a 2017 Psychology Today feature, psychologist Zack Carter identified texting as a kind of ‘illusionary cloak’ that downgrades emotions and reactions to emojis and brief snippets of text, limiting what he terms ‘self disclosure,’ excusing people from revealing more of their true emotions and inner selves and avoiding direct resolutions of conflict. Texting is rife with miscommunication, as the personal attributes of being human – desire, emotions, intents, drives – are much harder to relay in that manner. Carter goes on to note that given current statistics of mobile phone use, “face to face communication is becoming supplementary to texting when regarding relationship building and maintenance.”
I’m guilty. Everybody is. I text my loved ones more than I call them, same as you. For me, it’s less about a lack of time or an avoidance of personal interaction, and more about how I’ve relented to an established majority rule standard of how the world currently prioritizes its most common method of communication. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. I railed against it in the beginning, hopping on my old man get off my lawn platform, not wanting to lose the more intimate connections of hearing others’ voices and inflections.
I’m as subject to avoiding conflict as the next person, and sure, occasionally conversations center on hot topics with family or significant others, and we sometimes get heated and think it’s easier to conduct further discourse through texting.
It doesn’t work.
Texting to avoid emotional substance simply kicks the can down the road, a favorite American pastime. It’s an escapist measure nonetheless, one that’s inordinately contributing to the failure of the modern American state. Text is a chickenshit way of communicating. Let’s just paint that elephant in the room red. It’s a shortcut that doesn’t require critical thinking, emotive assertion, or measured responses.
Staying in touch solely through text puts people at arm’s length and it enables a method of removing someone from your life without actually having to bear the adult burden of responsibly explaining to someone how and why you no longer want them in your lives. Yeah, that’s something we really used to do…break up with partners or move on from friends via face to face interaction.
I’m guilty of this human disposition. I’ve ghosted folks and I’ve been ghosted. I figure it’s the weakest form of passive aggression we’ve created to date. It completely dodges ownership and the honor we ought to have in marking people in and out of our lives. If you’re ready to stop communicating with someone that’s fine, but have the guts to tell them and move on. I’ve always figured the primary reason people don’t do that, myself included, is because part of us wants to keep that person as a possible option, a potential return path down the line, so to speak. Inherently, humans don’t like closing doors for good, something I’ve been blasted for time and again over the years from ex-associates who thought I was being too rigid and final when I’d wish them well and bid them a fairer life upon realizing our friendship cycle seemed to be winding down and we were going our separate ways.
I’m kinda funny like that. I like closure. I tend to live my life as if I’m not going to be here tomorrow (ever ready for a personal or communal apocalypse, perhaps), and given that precept, just in case I’m never going to speak to them again, I want them to know that I loved them and that I wish nothing but the best for them, and to take care of themselves, and that’s that. People don’t like to hear that stuff. It’s too fatalistic, I guess, but honestly, I’m just riding the mortality train and I know damned well how it is to lose somebody without saying the things you’d liked to have told them before they left.
It’s easy to see why people utilize the text ghosting option: if I don’t respond after multiple incoming pings, I’m passively encouraging you to get the hint I am in fact blowing you off without actually confirming it to you, thus avoiding the effort of ownership, and the best part, for me, is that I get to keep reading your repeated efforts at contact, thus reinforcing my self-esteem in that I am indeed a worthy someone to lose.
It’s one of our less principled vicious circles. If you need to boot someone, don’t ghost them, just be a friggin’ adult and tell them directly, and honestly, 9 times outta 10 they’re gonna respect that and move on.
I’m not sure what the remaining holdout does in that estimate, at least between friends rather than lovers…do they lose their shit, present their case, make an impassioned plea for clemency? I guess it must happen. Heartbroken spouses are another animal, though, and while dealing with a despondent and desperate soon-to-be-ex is a tough cookie to swallow, for fuck’s sake, millennials, stop breaking up with each other via text, grow a pair already, and tell them it ain’t working out. You’ll live, you won’t lose any face, and you’re a better person for it.
Continued…
*Compiled from August 19, 2020