Tag Archives: texting

Communication Issues – Text vs. Talk for Teens

. communication, critical thinking, social media, writing . , ,

writingpicMy son Bailey, age 14, a freshman in high school, got an text message from a girl who is friends with Bailey’s date for homecoming dance.  The girl told him that his date is only going with him because she feels sorry for him.  The message went on to say that Bailey shouldn’t think he’s “all that” and not everyone likes him as much as he thinks they do.  It didn’t even stop there. It said he must be some sort of loser because he often sits in a group of girls at lunchtime. There was more, but you get my drift.

To me, Bailey’s mom, he is a fun-loving, silly sort of kid who loves people of all types and doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.  He had forty-five kids at his bar mitzvah last year, all of whom looked like his good friends to the adults watching. He tells me he has friends in the orchestra where he plays violin, and friends on the field where he is currently playing JV football.  However, this is my view of him – I have to remember that I have no real idea who he is at school and how he acts there.  He’s so generally happy at home that it leads me to believe he’s a fairly well-adjusted teen.  Maybe he is a bit cocky at school – or overly dorky – or something else that I don’t even know.  It’s not my business to know every detail of his social life.  I’m just glad he has a social life for me to ignore.

When I was a fourteen-year-old girl, I didn’t have such a bright social life.  I was overweight and decidedly uncool with glasses and weird clothes.  I used to write letters to various kids at school who would not tease me per se, but would rebuff my efforts to be friends.

Here’s the difference: I would leave the letters in stacks on my desk at home and then every so often I’d re-read them and ball them up for trash can. If I wanted to communicate with anyone for real, I had no choice but to do it over the phone or in person. I don’t pretend that kids being mean to one another was invented in this young generation; I just think it’s a lot easier to press the “send” button on a nasty text or email than it was for me to send a pen-and-ink letter.  In a way it was harder for my mom and dad to find out what I was up to when the door to my room was closed.  There wasn’t a mobile phone on which they could snoop into my texts and emails.  There’s a sometimes-blurry line between privacy and needing to monitor the behavior of young people.

HOWEVER, the day after this message, I learned that my son wasn’t so innocent in the whole matter.  It turns out that though the girl started it by sending a bunch of messages trying to tell him that his date doesn’t like him in “that” way, Bailey got mad at her for saying it, and called her email antics “bitchy” and that’s when she sent him the mean message.  Learning about Bailey’s role in the exchange changed my perspective pretty quickly.  To my husband and me, this was the perfect opportunity to discuss communication skills in general. As parents of these young teens, we have to take some responsibility for teaching our kids right from wrong.  But it goes deeper than that; we have to teach them about the power of their own words, both oral and written.

When he first got the message and I thought it was in a vacuum, I counseled Bailey to delete the text, the equivalent of balling up paper into the trash can.  It’s gone.  But then my husband sat Bailey down and told him that enough was enough.  This use of go-betweens and texting was inappropriate at best, hurtful and harmful at worst.  His best course of action, we told him, was to talk to the girl he is taking to the dance.  He should be as nice to the girl who was texting him as he always was and he should sit exactly where he wanted to at lunch. Then he should open a line of communication with his date, who clearly knew about the conversations.  And you know what? He did. Bailey told us that he and both girls decided (over lunch together) to just forget the exchanges ever happened. At the end of the day, I was proud of the way he handled himself, even if he didn’t start off so well.

Bailey, my husband and I learned a number of lessons from all of this.  We live in a society that over-shares. We have to tell ourselves to “think before you tweet” in our social-media-driven world, and though we have to give him a modicum of privacy, as Bailey’s parents, it behooves us to monitor his communication tools.

However, the number one lesson that Bailey learned is the power of direct communication face-to-face with his friends as opposed to listening to third-party opinions, writing emails and pressing the “send” button too quickly.  There is no substitute for looking a person in the eye and speaking with him or her.

Kids today are learning to hide behind texting, emails and social media (and don’t get me started on the grammar issues inherent therein) so they don’t communicate directly.  While I’m sorry it took a lousy experience like this to teach Bailey the lesson, I’m not that sorry it happened.  I only hope we all learned something along the way.

Texting and Walking

. Technology, Tokyo . , ,

I saw this article in the New York Times this week and since then, it has alternately resonated bleakly and made me laugh, depending on my state of mind at the given moment it enters my brain space.  It’s about texting and walking and the inherent dangers and rudeness of the practice.  It’s really a short film whereby the filmmaker illustrates the problem and then interviews offenders.

This problem is rampant in Tokyo.  Wherever I am, people are mosey-ing down the street (let’s face it – New Yorkers move; Tokyo-ites mosey – unless they run – then it’s serious) looking down on their phones and using their brilliant opposable thumbs in ways mother nature never intended and probably causes carpal tunnel syndrome eventually.  I wish it was just texting though.  Tokyo-ites read books and newspapers while they walk as well.  I commute to work by bicycle around the same time every day and I see the same people with their noses buried in something every day.  I have seen one person bump another more times than I can count.  The worst was someone stepping off the curb and into traffic while reading before being pulled back by someone else, who miraculously was actually watching the lights.  I haven’t seen anyone walk into a pole or anything else yet, but I’ve only been commuting for six months so far.  It’s bound to happen.  I would like to put this video onto the smart phone of every person in Tokyo.  It might be meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but I think it has a powerful underlying message and more than just a kernel of truth.

Communication Issues

. communication, social media . , , , ,

Everyone has a smart phone in this crazy world.  We have apps, texting, and access to email all day, every day.  Some might even call it 24/7 access to communication tools.   However, to me, it seems that the smarter we get with these phones, the less we seem to communicate.

Now before you go calling me a technophobe or a Luddite, or anything else, please note that I have a smart phone and I use it mightily.  In fact, I love it.  I rely on it so much that it’s always at my hip.  I know my students love that I can be reached all the time, and my kids find it handy also.  My husband loves to text me to tell me that he’s going to be late coming home from work because then he doesn’t get immediate feedback from me and I have time to consider my words before replying.  A phone call does not allow that type of consideration.

What gets us in trouble is when we use these types of tools to replace voice communication.  My son, age 12, prefers to text or email a friend to ask him to come over to hang out rather than to call and arrange the date.  I was talking with a friend last week, and she told me that her nearly-13-year-old daughter was having some trouble with some girls at school – the typical adolescent friendship triangle where both of the other two girls didn’t want my friend’s daughter to be friends with the other girl.  My friend’s daughter felt like she couldn’t talk to the girls at school – there wasn’t time in the day.  So my friend suggested that her daughter call each girl.  That was rejected as too scary.  What my friend’s daughter ended up doing was sending a tentative text to test the waters of the girls’ feelings.  My friend was upset – how could she teach her child to communicate when there were so many methods available to avoid full-on communication?  She did not understand how the three girls could resolve their differences via text message.  And as of yet, they haven’t.  They are all practicing studious avoidance – and it’s causing more problems.  Some of this is typical adolescence, but some of it is exacerbated by technology as well.

I see it in my students all the time.  They sit next to each other and send text messages to each other. In class their phones are on silent but I hear a distinct “hummn” of a vibrated incoming message every few minutes from someone’s pocket or backpack.

My sister-in-law said that a few years ago, she was in the habit of driving carpools for her kids to various activities, and all of a sudden, she realized she had a car-full of  six kids from ages 14-16 who were completely silent.  All of them were looking down studiously at their phones and texting.  No one spoke.   I read a facebook status a few weeks ago: “It is imperative when driving that one person in the car stop texting to watch for the light to turn green.”  They’re not texting and driving, technically, right?

I am certain that more than 100 years ago when the telephone became ubiquitous that people lamented the lack of face-to-face visits which were being replaced by phone conversations.  We had the same crisis-like posts when email came on the scene in full-force, too.  This is the same concept.  I guess as long as some type of communication is happening and kids are not sitting alone in their houses all the time doing it, we’re still in somewhat good shape.

There is a lot about which to worry in these scenarios, though.  Voice communication is going down, as is face-to-face communication.  Texting language, in all of its glorious brevity, is appearing in more and more written communication inappropriately.  What does this mean for kids now?  Well, I think it means more assiduous attention to detail and teaching communication skills.  There are times when texting is fine – confirming a meeting time, sending a brief comment.  But there are times when a phone call is better – ironing out a problem, expressing love.  And importantly, sometimes only a visit will suffice – to a grieving friend or family member.  As I tell my students, it’s important to “know your rhetorical situation.”  Check your audience and then act appropriately.  Do not use texting language when communicating with your professor.  Conversely, do not use long words when texting.

All of these methods of communicating could lead to MORE communication between people if it’s all used appropriately.  It is up to us, as the teachers and parents of the young people, to teach kids the appropriate ways to do it.  Are you up for that challenge?  I am.