17
votes
The limits of our digital social connections
I don’t think it’s just social media that is making us so unhappy these days. Even texting has lost its power to communicate and connect us.
My parents lost one of their best friends to old age yesterday and none of us can seem to find the right thing to say. It’s all just near misses and misinterpretation of intentions.
When texting first started a generation ago, it seemed a miraculous way to share all kinds of details we never could before. But now it only seems to emphasize what we won’t ever understand about each other.
The bloom is off the rose and our screens no longer seem to make us happy the way they used to.
Digital communication always had limits. That was always a part of the appeal. When instant messaging and cellular text messaging first came on the scene, I didn't get it because it seemed to be a shallow approximation of real conversation. Why text when you could just call them?
But now we've escaped into the comforts of those limitations. It used to be that when you called someone, they'd drop what they were doing and pick up the phone. Now it's practically considered rude to call someone in the first place. It seems lately there are more and more people who are realizing this and want to go back to a more personal communication style, but they're very much in the minority.
My advice is to be the change you want to see in the world. Make it a habit of actually picking up your phone, and be the dick who makes phone calls instead of texts. Maybe just make sure that the people you are communicating understand why you do them, though.
I think you really got to the core of the issue. Interestingly enough, I find that the older we get, the more likely my friend group (30-somethings, so millennials) are to call each other, and the more likely we are to pick up immediately too. WhatsApp and the like seems to be used more and more often as just a tool for shitposting and sharing memes.
What I also think, though, is that this is connected to the loss of 'third places', something which I see discussed online more and more frequently. Initially, the Internet acted almost like a 'fourth place' - you had the places where you hung out IRL and you had the Internet, where you could be pretty much whoever, have a completely different set of friends etc. Then, the arrival of web 2.0 and social networks muddied the waters, and with the steady decline of IRL third places, these online spaces became a substitute. 10-15 years on, they're declining as well, but there's nowhere else to move on to - nothing new has sprung up either online or offline for people to move to. Can't even go back to what was before since that is gone, too. Of course people are unhappy.
This is not unique to texting. This is a very common problem in difficult situations like this even when communicating in-person.
I met my wife via textual communication (though I'll readily admit we didn't fall for each other until we met in person). There are things that are harder to express via text -- you can't give someone a hug that way, for instance. But there are also conversations that can be easier to have that way. The idea that it has "lost its power to communicate" is just false. You've lost your rose-tinted glasses, but it remains the same imperfect but useful tool it's always been.
Yes it’s absolutely a shift in my perception of the tool’s value. That’s all I’m remarking on here. That shift seems to have happened, from my perspective, and instead of feeling excited by the contact I can only feel what’s missing. It’s a natural progression, for sure. And other modes of communication aren’t immune to it. But I think it’s still worth discussing.
Definitely worth discussing! Consider my reply just a bit of contrary perspective.
This is something I never do with most people in my life. I can't handle silence when it comes to being around people most of the time. The only exceptions are my closest friends and my husband. I have literally had multiple hours long phone calls with my bff where we just sit in silence for most of it, just hanging out and being together on the phone through anything we're doing or not doing. Just being together since we live fairly far away from each other that we only get to visit with each other in person a few times a month.