Text talk should give way to real talk

Photo by Taco Ekkel, via flickr

Diego Saldaña-Rojas/Entertainment Director 

We are more connected than ever before in the history of humanity.

Communicating with individuals on the other side of the planet instantaneously is something we take for granted. We may be connected more easily as a global society, but are we using this to have meaningful conversations?

Take the importance we give to text messaging as an example. It seems that we, as a society, have created an unwritten, perhaps at this point published, work on how to text message. The complexity of text messaging is not only in the syntax but also in the much deeper undertones that many individuals give to certain phrases.

The dissection of text and Facebook messages is most commonly seen when two people are starting to talk to each other with romantic intentions in mind.

We give importance to the number of punctuation marks, emoticons and emojis. Let’s not forget the most important thing of all: the amount of time between the sending of a message and the response. Moments of anxiety or relief are brought about due to the ring of a cell phone.

On more than one occasion, I have come across men and women analyzing a text message as if it were a line from a piece by Chaucer or Shakespeare. With every “:P” or “;)” a team of linguists, namely one’s friends, are dispatched to analyze the frequency, placement and context of the emoticons/emoji.

Contrary to popular belief, text messaging should not be the focus in the commencement of a relationship.

A face-to-face conversation holds more value than any lengthy text message. Body language, facial expressions and tone of voice are all cues that are absent throughout a text conversation. They are cues that cannot be picked up by looking at words on a screen.

This diminishes the sense of intimacy one can experience in a face-to-face conversation, as opposed to a bright screen with meaningless words that do not give you a complete feel for how the other person is reacting to your messages.

Cell phones should be used as a tool for us to convene and share genuine conversation — not to host the conversation.

Text messaging and other forms of impersonal communication will continue to expand and evolve. We, as a society, will only continue to expand on these forms of communication. While such means of communicating are of great benefit to society as a whole, we must not attempt to think that we can replace a face-to-face conversation with an instant message, a phone call or a text message.

Trade :) for real ones.

diego.saldana@fiusm.com 

About the Author

Diego Saldaña
: Opinion Director, Broadcast Major. Interests: Vintage motorcycles, cycling, collecting vinyl records, history.

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