The Femme Files

The Death of Conversation

The Texting Epidemic

It is 8:30 am. I am sitting on the train for the daily morning commute, still a bit weary, but slowly coming to life with every sip of my black tea.  I look around at my fellow commuters, as well as the man sitting next to me.  I would like to strike up a friendly conversation to help the time pass on this overstuffed train, but I can’t…He is thoroughly engaged (through my nosey peeping) in his facebook application on his iPhone. I have another look around and notice the strange phenomenon – everybody’s eyeballs are glued to the screens of their mobile phones! I even see a girl texting so fast that she looks like she is going to have an aneurysm if she doesn’t deliver her telephonic message in less than 3.5 seconds.  Nobody sitting on this train is talking. It’s as though a simple “good morning” or a friendly chat is a thing of the past. Am I behind the times because I want to form words from my mouth to communicate with another person?  I have a think and ask:

 Where did verbal communication go?Unfortunately, the days of talking to someone face-to-face or even telephonically are now replaced online and electronically. Of course there are some advantages to this type of communication – we can get a message across to the masses with a simple click; we can shoot a text to someone about changed dinner plans in a blink; and staying in touch with people around the world has never been easier. So for the more seasoned and comfortable verbalisers, this can be quite beneficial. However, for today’s youth and the anti-social prone, the replacement of verbal communication with emails, texting, facebook, etc. is proving to be detrimental. Social graces are lacking. Comfort with eye contact and body language are decreasing. As mentioned before, simply chatting with a stranger doesn’t exist. Actually, it seems almost awkward.

Yet befriending a stranger on facebook and chatting with them online is fine! In fact, chatting online seems to be the favoured form of dialogue. A recent study conducted by Oxygen Media & Lightspeed Research surveyed 1,605 adults and over 50% of the women aged 18-34 said they chat more online than they do face-to-face. That is surprising considering how much girls love to talk! And this leads to another point- being the emotional creatures we women are, how are we able to convey our emotions through the written word?

With the human voice dissipating, there is a great margin of error to misinterpret a written message. We are all guilty of reading what someone has written and thinking the tone was mean or harsh, when it actually wasn’t. So before you write something nasty back (using lots of exclamation points!!!) maybe you should call or meet the person to find out what they were trying to say.

And this is your femmefiles homework. Call your friends or loved ones instead of writing on their wall or sending a text. Chat with someone on the train instead of checking your emails. Increase your verbal communication and social interaction and please let femmefiles know how you go!