First it was answering machines. Then it progressed to cell phones, email, and texting. The idea that we must be accessible 24/7 has quickly become accepted in our culture. But is it helpful? Is it even healthy?
My daughter is 25 years old and moves among a group of friends who maintain contact through texting one another all day. They are representative of many young people, often beginning as early as pre-teens. They work or go to school (often both), but the texting never stops, regardless of whether they are “on the clock” or in a classroom. Employers are naturally concerned about the level of inattention of their employees. Professors and other teachers have to contend with the same thing.
Also, the texts perpetuate drama and gossip that might have died a natural death without this constant stream of discussion.
It seems that personal relationships aren’t being strengthened, either, with this ability to maintain constant contact. I’ve seen young women become hypersensitive to the lack of an immediate return of a text message. They react as if their boyfriends don’t like them any more if their text isn’t returned immediately. The second guessing begins: “Is he with someone else? Why isn’t he answering me? What’s wrong?” This behavior is unrealistic and destructive to relationships; yet it is the norm among young people today.
On a larger scale we also see this with the ever-present media coverage of minutia relating to just about everything, even if it isn’t newsworthy. Do I really need to know what the President’s favorite cheeseburger is or how many cattle he has on his ranch? Or who the latest hot entertainer was seen with over the weekend? I can’t help but think our government would run more efficiently if allowed to churn in its own machinations without our knowing truly unimportant details along the way. Yes, in a democracy we need to be informed about our representatives and their political ideas and stances, but we don’t need to know what they wore or where they went to lunch with whom. This over-indulgence of media coverage lends itself to the creation of the news instead of merely reporting it.
It’s all simply too much information.
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I completely AGREE Miss Deb!!! I sit at work all day and everyone around me is texting. I go to lunch and there they are, eating and texting. As I leave the building their in the hallways, elevator, stair wells, and in the parking lot, texting. As I drive home, their driving along side of me, TEXTING!!! It's constant. Of course, I can't stand to talk on the phone, much less have to be ready at a moment's notice to punch tiny little letters on the front of a cell phone and then wait for a response... I had the texting ability on my phone turned off because friends were texting me even after I explained to them that I don't text!!! I don't! Call me crazy, old, or whatever you want, but I DON'T TEXT!!! And as long as he's doing his job, I don't really care what he chose to eat for lunch today.
ReplyDeleteI remember when I ran a company in L.A.decades ago. We did business with New York the minute we hit the door at 9:00 am. This was natural and things were fairly hectic.Correspondence took about a week. In the meantime everyone went home at about 5 and saw their kids. Then came Fed Ex. We still had no computers. Fed Ex started the slow hysteria.....we started running to meet the "deadline". Then came the computers and now I don't have 2 minutes to myself to think because I get 28 new emails every day...and my business is brand new. All I can say is yuuuuuuk! I'm going to the beach and leavin my phone in the car.Thanks Deb!
ReplyDeleteNiris Iris
It's such a safety issue, too! Remember the train crash where the conductor was texting seconds before impact? And wasn't there another, similar incident more recently? Well-said, Deb.
ReplyDeleteVery nicely done, Deborah. I wrote a poem not that long ago called "My Text About Texting". In it, I express that writing whole words is handy and to make them rhyme is dandy. The actual reason for the poem was to state that I must be out of the loop because I don't text. However, I'm still pretty happy about that.
ReplyDelete