I'm tired of bad cell phone etiquette.
I recently went away for a weekend get together with a few old girlfriends. Shopping, eating, old movies -- it's something we do every year and I look forward to our reconnect time. It's the only time we really see each other without all the baggage the years have given us.
But this year during our weekend, something was different. One of the girls in our party spent the majority of the time on her fancy-schmancy new cell phone -- the kind of phone that will sell you a ticket to the moon if you have the right app.
Instead of the constant stream of rapidly interrupted conversation we usually enjoy, any time there was a lull, my friend was instantly glued to her phone. Texting, gaming, updating her Facebook account and retrieving updates; it felt like she spent as much time with her virtual friends as she did with us.
This is something I'm noticing everywhere. I'll be having a conversation with someone when bam! They get a text. Without missing a beat, they pull out their phone, retrieve the text and often text back without even realizing how incredibly rude that kind of behavior is, or that they had disconnected from our conversation completely.
And I'm not innocent here. While I might not spend much time texting, I have to make a serious effort to let my phone ring unanswered when I'm talking to the pharmacist, or visiting with a professional. I've noticed that when people do take the time to consciously keep their attention on the person in front of them, despite the onslaught of cord-free interruptions we're all plagued with, it's appreciated.
The biggest problem is that the people rapidly picking up on these bad habits are our children. More and more teenagers are missing the importance of eye contact and verbal communication because so much of their social world revolves around cyberspace. A few months back, I had a young 14-year-old cousin get offended at me. She sent me a text, letting me know in no uncertain terms why she was mad and what she thought I had done wrong.
I was stunned. Not, necessarily, because her accusations were invalid, but because she sent me a text. We live relatively close to one another. It wouldn't have taken five minutes to drive the distance or call me on the phone.
Instead, she texted things she would have never, ever said during a face-to-face conversation. This is the problem with virtual communication. And more and more kids are texting completely inappropriate things to one another -- things they would never say in person.
I fear that this kind of communication is making our kids the wrong kind of bold. Instead of paying attention to that natural thermostat for good versus bad, kids tend to push the line and say things that they can "get away with," because there's no physical repercussion to their irreverent joke or ill-thought-out rant.
My oldest sister is 26 years my senior, and growing up we lived next door to one another. Coming from a big family, I learned early on that clear communication is paramount to survival. I can remember being a terrified 14-year-old who had to go talk to my big sister about some family wrinkle.
It was unnerving, but that was the point.
There is a reason we do things in person; so much is lost through black-and-white letters. We each have a natural thermostat for things that are appropriate to say in a face-to-face conversation, and things that are not. Take the other person's reaction out of the equation and you might just say things you would later regret. And like my mother always says, she's thankful for the things she never said.
When it comes right down to it, cyber communication has pitfalls on every side. Whether the virtual world we live in is taking us away from the people we're standing with, or whether it's keeping us from facing up to someone who deserves eye contact, we could all stand to be a little more careful.
In the end, it's about more than good manners; it's about respect.
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