Few experts could come up with a recent, reliable figure for the total number of texts sent in the course of a year; but it would surely be in the hundreds of trillions. Oddly though, even despite such widespread acceptance, communications experts are divided about whether the lowly SMS (the technical term for the industry's ‘short message service’) will survive another 15 years. Whatever its fate, texting will continue in one form or other, whether it’s via the chatty back-and-forth of instant messages, the wish-you-were-here quality of photo messages, or e-mail messages transmitted via the Internet, it’s all quite inconsequential to me.
That’s because the purpose of this column is to direct a stern diatribe at the effect the simple text message has had on society. Case in point, walk down virtually any metropolitan street and you will notice - I hope with some alarm - at how no one is aware of each other's presence or their surroundings anymore. Long gone are the days when you would greet each passerby. No, now that we prefer to communicate via sms, we shuffle past each other with the shambling gait of zombies.
Hearing blocked by blaring, blathering earphones, heads bent over mobile phones, iPods, palm pilots, multimedia players, text-messagers and other hypnotic gadgetry, the modern day walking dead are everywhere to see. Should you try to engage one of these day-walkers all you’ll get is a look of disdain before they continue with their routine of zero human engagement.
So far rotten has our societal interaction become that it’s a reached a point of no return. Indeed, the very foundation of communication between individuals has been rewritten - although as you would expect I failed to understand the shorthand it was reworded in. I mean have you talked to your kids lately? Probably not. That’s because their preferred method of communicating with us is by mobile phone, text message or, at a stretch, via e-mail. I remember attempting to call out for my daughter to come down to dinner recently, only to find her holed up in her room, lackadaisically listening to music. You know what she told me? “Why didn’t you just text me Mama?”
Need another example? Try this: when was the last time you had a conversation, and I use the word sarcastically, with the guy a few cubicles from you at work? I guess it was it was via email wasn’t it? How have we let this happen? It’s quite simple: we allowed the short message (whether by phone, computer, or super-gadget somewhere between the two) to emerge as the primary communication platform via which we relate to others. The result is that too many people have been rendered unable to communicate face to face.
I am going to start changing my behaviour and I hope you will too. My first step will be to re-establish communication with my family on a personal level. I am no longer going to be hostage to my phone. If I’m in the middle of a real conversation and it rings, I will simply call back at a better time. I won’t accept sms’s from my kids either: they can learn to talk to me. And I am going to take a moment to talk to my colleagues at work.
We may never get back to the days of the shared office lunch or even eating a family dinner as a single unit, those are probably just bygone traditions, but these will be good first steps. And before you try to pretend this article doesn’t apply to you, ask yourself this: the last time you left the house without your cell phone, you immediately went back to retrieve it didn’t you? You’re a zombie too.
