TEXTING

TEXT, TEXT, TEXTING,

SEALING UP YOUR LIPS,

BY BANGING ON YOUR QWERTY,

AND MAKING MUM'S THE WORD.

I bet you have witnessed the modern day phenomenon of hip teenyboppers sitting within whispering distance of each other while enthusiastically banging away on their personal communication devices to post and reply to endless encoded typed messages to each other. You would think that people would rather face-up to each other in order to make a very personal connection, and then to complete the social link, select the appropriate words from a vast reservoir of words and meanings to make a uniquely personal presentation by conveying abstract ideas and emotional feelings in a more directed, and personal way. To wit: The spoken word comes with the added advantage of judging the emotional state and possible underlying reasons for the verbal communication. 

But wait, I bet you have also witnessed hip adults doing the same texting thing.

What's going on here?

We could research plenty of psychobabble to address the latest human idiosyncrasy, but perhaps, just an old geezer's observation would better serve a measure of understanding.

So here goes. It seems to me, speaking "face-to-face" with another person carries with it the acceptance of "personal responsibility" for the whole tenor of the personal interaction because you are, indeed, interrelating "face-to-face." By substituting texting in lieu of personalizing speech, personal responsibility for the communication is muted because of the lack of the more human communication factors, such as, using and interpreting body language, eye contact, emotional state of each party, to name just a few. While using indirect speech (phone) lacks the more personal human communications factors listed above, it nevertheless carries with it more emotion and meaning than the written word.

So, it seems to me, we have a modern day dichotomy here. Modern people now have the technical means to be in constant contact with one another in order to fulfill some sort of human need to be in a continuous social interacting state. However, by substituting texting for speech, they avoid the more important aspects of human communications by becoming less responsible for it.

Very strange.