a darn good read
10:59:00 PMA DARN GOOD READ
Stop Texting: It’s Actually (Scientifically And Psychologically) F*cking Up Your Life
Texting is the biggest catch-22
of our time. We love it for its convenience and fun Emojis, but we probably don’t
notice just how much it’s making us feel like sh*t.
notice just how much it’s making us feel like sh*t.
Everybody loves the feeling of the little red (1) on the screen,
but what about when you’re waiting for an answer that never comes?
What about when you’re trying to convey sarcasm, but it just
comes off as rude?
What about the irritating
expectation that comes with having to always be
available to respond to every text, or risk seeming like a jerk?
These are the six aspects of
modern-day texting that are psychologically ruining you, and you don’t even
know it.
1. The lack of important non-verbal communication tactics
Non-verbal communication, including voice inflection, facial
expressions and body language, is a crucial part of everyday life. None of
these things, however, come through via text, and this will affect how people
communicate with you.
If you generally rely on your quirky personality traits,
humorous sarcasm and offbeat humor in social situations, you can kiss those
goodbye when you’re on your phone.
Good luck trying to convey that your jokey insult as an actual
joke; without the proper voice inflection, it’ll be way too easy over text to
interpret it as hurtful.
Grammar and uppercase letters have become the new, sometimes
inaccurate form of non-verbal communication. Have fun trying to play off your
period as a real period. Whenever the rigid grammatical finality that is the
period enters a text, people always think it means you’re being stern, even if
you weren’t.
Hey, they had no other non-verbal cues to go on, so what else do
you expect?
What about if you find something funny? How will someone be able
to tell if your “haha” was just a filler word for an awkward comment or if
it really means you laughed?
You need actual, real-life giggles to coincide with the “haha,”
but unfortunately, texting doesn’t allow for that. So you have to write
“HAHAHA,” which is annoying.
Texting messes with our fundamental understanding of non-verbal
cues, replacing them with potentially inaccurate ones. Non-verbal cues are
already sometimes difficult to interpret. Texting just makes it worse.
2. The different ways men and women value texting
Ladies, have you ever wondered
why your boyfriend or crush isn’t super chatty via text and why it feels like
you can have hours-long conversations with your girlfriends about absolutely
nothing? And men, have you ever wondered why sometimes it feels like your
female friends can talk forever?
Men and women value
communication differently. Each gender sees communication as having
different significances, and sometimes, those significances don’t align.
Various communication scholars,
including Ronald D. Smith, a communications professor at Buffalo State
(SUNY), say that men communicate to convey information and women
communicate to create intimacy.
For men, communication is a way
to exchange information; once the needed information is exchanged, men feel as
if there is nothing more to say. Women, on the other hand, view communication
as a tool to relate, share and connect, so the scope of conversation for women
is unlimited.
Here’s where the problems lie.
Texting is communication for the sake of communication. Women text to bond, but
men bond by doing activities together, like sharing new skills, playing sports
or video games, watching movies or going to the gym.
If a man doesn’t text a woman
as frequently or enthusiastically as she texts him, she thinks he has no
interest in her. She interprets his lack of texting as him not wanting to bond,
and then he probably wonders why she’s so randomly upset with him.
Texting is just not a man’s preferred method of intimacy. He
needs communication in conjunction with an activity, so he’d probably rather
you come over and watch a movie instead. (Which is probably better anyway, if
we’re being honest.)
3. The false senses of power
With texting, a new definition
of power is created. Throughout history and politics, power has been defined as
the ability to influence or direct the behavior of others. Now, power is
defined as someone waiting on you for a text message response.
There’s always a palpable power
struggle during a texting conversation. Every time you send a text message,
there is always a possibility that you will be ignored.
No matter how important you
think your text is, the receivers can just put their phones in their pockets
and disregard your existence. This kind of thing can’t happen
in real life. Someone can’t ignore you when you’re face-to-face.
So, because we (unfortunately)
live in a world in which vulnerability is weakness and a lack of power, sending
a text means you just lost a little bit of power. Whoever receives your
text has your vulnerability in his or her hands and therefore has the power.
The more time that passes
without a response, the more power the receiver has. It’s just the science of
texting.
What’s worse is that you won’t
even realize you’re being ignored until hours later when you still haven’t
received a answer. Your anxiety will have just been building upon itself for
hours until it crumbles into a feeling of abandonment and shame. You’ll be on
edge until you get — or don’t get — an answer.
4. The “Read Receipt”
If you have an iPhone, you know about the dreaded Read Receipt.
If you don’t have an iPhone, you’ve probably experienced this same phenomenon
with Facebook’s “Seen” message that pops up when someone has read your message.
The Read Receipt is the absolute
worst invention ever. Read Receipts (and things like them) contribute to the
false sense of power that texting creates. When people have Read Receipts
turned on, they alert everybody to exactly when
they’ve read your text message.
This can mean one of two things: either that person wants you to
know he or she saw your message and are just busy right now and will answer
soon, or that he or she wants you to know he or she saw your message and is
purposely ignoring you.
As most Read Receipt users are not noble, we all know the second
one is the most common use of the Read Receipt. Read Receipts assert dominance.
They say, “I’ve definitely seen your message, and you will
definitely know whether or not I choose to acknowledge it. Now, you can wallow
in wondering why.”
Read Receipts also create a sense of urgency. Say you have your
Read Receipt turned on and the person who texted you knows you saw the message.
If you can’t answer in a timely matter, you might feel guilty
because that person knows you saw the text, but just aren’t responding. You may
rush yourself into answering, which will cause you to resent that person.
I’d rather rationalize self-delusional excuses as to whether or
not you saw my text than learn the cold, hard knowledge that comes with the
Read Receipt.
5. The creation of bad liars
“Sorry, I didn’t see your
message!”
“You sent me a text? I didn’t
get it.”
“Hey, sorry, I haven’t looked
at my phone all day.”
Lies. All lies. All of us, at the very minimum,
periodically glance at our phones throughout the day. Our phone is
not just our phone; it’s our alarm clock, our email, our source of news, our
social media, our camera, our weather source, our bank accounts and more.
Sure, you don’t have to answer a text message at the exact
moment you receive it. Excuses for not answering texts can be legitimate. Maybe
you were at your brother’s baseball game, maybe you were at a family dinner, or
maybe you were working overtime and were taking a nap.
Those are very reasonable excuses not to answer a text, and I
am, in fact, proud of you for sacrificing technology to engage in real life.
However, to say that the reason you didn’t answer is because you
were not looking at your phone or didn’t get the text is to lie. You saw it.
Especially if you have your Read Receipt on.
When you give me this terrible
reason for not answering my text, I have no way of actually provingthat you lied (even though I know you did), so I
have to just accept the excuse. And then I feel stupid.
6. The never-ending conversation
Normal conversations in person end when somebody either declares
that it’s over or walks away. With texting, conversations truly have no
beginning and no end.
Think about it. Most people don’t even start a conversation with
a “Hey” anymore because that’s boring. You have to be intriguing to start your
conversation.
Then, after the initial greeting, a tennis match-style
conversation begins where you’re just talking at each other and making sure
that the blue-to-grey ratio is 1:1. You text, he/she texts; you text, he/she
texts.
It alternates all day. Nonstop. And if you sent the last text,
you better not send another one because now it’s his or her turn to continue
the conversation.
Well, when does the conversation end? Is it over when a question
is asked and answered? Is it over when one of you “senses” that it’s done? What
if one person “sensed” that the conversation was over and the other person
didn’t, so that second person thinks he or she is being ignored?
I can’t even fathom how we have all gotten so used to being in
communication with every single person at every hour of the day. We don’t even
give people chances to miss us because we are constantly in the middle of a
conversation with them.
They can’t long for us or wonder what we’re up to or where we
are because they are always with us; they practically live in our damn pockets.
This never-ending conversation
style prevents us from truly spending time alone. In a 2003 study on
the benefits of being alone, Christopher R. Long and James R.
Averill found that solitude is crucial for the development of the self.
Spending time alone means growing spiritually, discovering your
identity without outside distractions, having the freedom to do what you want
without needing to cater to other people’s wants and thriving creatively.
So,
if you’re constantly in the middle of a texting conversation with somebody and
if you have no idea when the conversation is actually over, you truly can never
be by yourself. And that’s really important.
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