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Printer-Friendly ModeText offenders: Cell phone addicts make for irritating times
February 8, 2010 —
When I first saw that someone was writing an opinion on texting last week I thought, “Dang, I was going to write about that.”
But, when I read it, I realized it wasn’t the same thing I was thinking at all. It was just an additional example of how communication is changing with technology. So forgive me for putting out another opinion column about texting, but it is one that I feel is needed.
Being a server at a restaurant, I see a fair amount of people talking on their cell phones when they first sit down. They are trying to call the person they are meeting or end a conversation they were having while waiting for a table.
That’s fine. But I kid you not, I’ve had a table where there was a couple and their one-year-old, and both the parents were on their separate phones, texting.
And so what was the baby doing? Eating the crayons. I looked at them and seriously wondered why they had decided to come out to eat together.
When I go out to eat somewhere, I think of it as a social activity. But the social activity is with the person I’m sitting with, not the person on the other end of the text conversation.
People are so wrapped up in their phones and getting new messages. Phones can even receive Facebook notifications (as if we aren’t addicted enough to Facebook, right?).
Everywhere you go, you can be linked to hundreds of people. It seems that people are almost literally glued to their phones.
Texting has made it so that you can have conversations with ten different people on your phone while still “having a conversation” with someone who is physically there.
I can’t seem to hang out with anyone without an interruption. One text or two doesn’t bother me, but when there is a whole conversation going on, I begin to wonder why I’m even in the room.
I drove two and a half hours to visit a friend for the night. I hadn’t seen her in a few weeks. We ended up all playing Guitar Hero with her dad.
When her fingers weren’t slamming out some tunes, they were poking away at her cell phone. Her dad actually asked her, “Why are you texting other friends when you have friends right here to talk to?”
I don’t think she really had a good answer.
When a friend is texting while I’m talking to her, it makes me wonder if she is even hearing what I have to say.
What’s really awkward is when I tell a funny story and my friend starts laughing. I don’t really think it was that funny, but I feel good because I made my friend laugh. But then she looks at me and says “What are you laughing at?” It turns out, she wasn’t laughing at my story at all: she just received a funny text. Oops.
I challenge you to think of it this way: If you were hanging out with a friend, would you answer a call and talk on the phone for a half hour? I don’t think so.
So why carry on a half hour text conversation? You may think that it’s less rude because you can still talk to the person you are with, but I don’t think it is less rude at all.
Maybe next time I want to have a conversation with you, I should stay home, you can hang out with someone else, and then we can text.
So when you are hanging out with someone and someone else texts you, ignore the text until later.
I promise you, it will be OK. You will survive.
You might even become better friends with the person you are spending time with.