Textaholism
by Bex Appleton
I hate to be the bearer of negativity, but New Zealand textaholism is an increasing epidemic that just doesn’t seem to bear an end.
It is dangerously stripping us of etiquette, personality, communication abilities and intellect – we are become stupider!
In today’s fast society it is easy to desire gratification instantly, and there seems no better way of getting this fix than to flick someone a text.
This relatively more instant form of communication may be appropriate for very general things, but it is creeping into areas of society and conduct that is not right.
For instance, in the case of Damien O’Connor texting the Prime Minister Helen Clark his resignation - this was entirely inappropriate and unprofessional.
Furthermore, there is the issue of allowing the use of the ‘text language’ in exams. Do we not send our children to school to be educated and taught how to read, write, and construct sentences properly and communication effectively.? Allowing texting will have the similar consequences as when calculators were introduced into schools and exams.
How often have you been to a shop, to be served by someone who has to wait for the machine to tell them how much change you needed from a ten a dollar bill when you bought something for two dollars sixty. Aren’t we dumbing our kids down enough!
Through texting we are stripping our ability to communicate effectively and form proper relationships. Texting prohibits face to face communication and modifies the meanings of each word used by the sender. The recipient’s role also changes, to that of a mind reader, and we all know what an impossible job that is.
It is incredibly easy to miss cues like tone, infliction and structure while reading text - which often leads to meaning being unwittingly missed or misinterpreted.
We all think and communicate differently - this in itself makes effective communication a hard task. But to add another level of comolication to the way we relate to one another is madness. There’s no wonder why relationships suffer, people’s ability to communication effectively suffers and heartbreak occurs.
People have become scared of face to face communication, but it is something we need to encourage, so New Zealanders can reclaim their manners, intelligence and successful communicating abilities as a society.
Fearful of sounding like a prude, I have to say I’ve become increasingly worried about Facebook. Like texting, Facebook is used in totally inappropriate ways. For example: one of my Facebook friends is the head of the University department I did my MA with. I didn’t seek him out as a friend, far from it, he sent me a ‘XYZ wants to be your friend’ type request – to which I could either ignore or confirm. This left me in a quandary. Did I ignore – an action he would be privy to – and thus create a non-friendship where before there’d be nothing. Or did I confirm and thus falsely convey to him and others, that we were indeed friends. I chose confirm because I thought, well, in the scheme of things what’s the worst that can happen?
With Facebook there are applications – you can throw a sheep at someone, you can send them flowers and you can shout them a drink which is exactly what this non-friend Facebook friend did. To be fair, he probably sent out drinks to all his other Facebook friends given the gifting system is opt out rather than opt in: all your friends are automatically included and you have to go through and excluded them one by one.
But still. Being shouted a drink from the head of a department? It’s exactly the same sort of inappropriate behaviour you talk about texting facilitating.