Is Texting versus Talking destroying the human dialogue?

Yesterday, I started blogging about the question: "Is Text Messaging vs. Talking emotionally healthy?" 

A couple of weeks ago, lunching with a friend, she confided that she had never spoken on the telephone to her current amour. They communicate entirely by email and on Facebook and Twitter – texting rather than talking to each other or hearing each other's voices.

"But we've had a lot of face-time," she said, sensing, I think, my surprise and dismay.

I must admit I was shocked. Has interpersonal communication – romance – come to this? If it has, how sad. 

What's happened to interpersonal communication?

Then last evening CBC broke the story about the University of British Columbia medical research finding a 10-fold increase in the use of atypical antipsychotics in young children – drugs not intended for use in children, not tested with children, and potentially dangerous or even lethal. You should see the comments. They go on for more than 20 pages and counting. Over 100 of them.

First. Let me say that I've taken antipsychotic drugs since the 1960s – though never a steady diet of them. I was given them mostly when I was hospitalized. Sporadically. From Chlorpromazine, also known as "the chemical lobotomy" and Haldol when I was a teenager. Those drugs hit me like a sledgehammer and deadened me emotionally. They also caused side-effects. Facial ticks for which I needed to take another drug, Cogentin. This went on for years, even after I was started on a steady prescription of Lithium at the age of 27 and repeatedly, almost annually hospitalized for mania. 

Later, I was given several of the atypical antipsychotic drugs sited in the CBC story – Seroquel and Risperdal – but only "as needed" which turned out to be rather infrequently and only in miniscule doses – and I was in my late 40s and early 50s. I haven't taken or needed any antipsychotic medications of any kind for the last 9 years.

During the early years, the 1960s, I was given these antipsychotic drugs in hospital – never a steady diet of them – because I had episodes of psychosis. I was having delusions and hallucinations. I couldn't sleep. I wasn't thinking clearly. At one time, for four months in hospital, I was catatonic. The psychotic episodes started when I was 17 years of age. 

At no time, to the best of my knowledge, did I ever "act out" in school or become violent or threaten a teacher or another student. Members of my family described me as "histrionic" – dramatic, theatrical, emotional, larger-than-life. Attention-seeking. Clearly, I did not conform. 

It occurred to me that there may a connection between my original question regarding "texting versus talking" and young children today – why they're acting out so violently and being prescribed drugs that could seriously and permanently hurt them. Drugs that numb them emotionally but do nothing to get at the real reasons causing their behaviour. 

Something is very wrong. It's all wrapped up, I believe, in our ultimate loss of humanity. The change in the nature of our interpersonal communications. Our social world. People are using their eyes, but what about their ears and their hearts? Listening, actively, intelligently, emotionally and with empathy?

The difference between animals and humans is that humans can talk to each other. Animals can't. Animals communicate, but they don't use words and spoken language, and they don't engage in verbal conversation or thoughtful, rational, articulated, cerebral communication with each other.  

The keyword is engage. You cannot call texting talking because it's not. Nor is email. They're both toneless. Flat. Dead. There's no real spark. No real human excitement or demand for live, engrossing, involving, absorbing, demanding thought, articulation, conversation. Simultaneously and emotionally.  

There's no engagement. Think about what's happening. Instead of talking with each other, more and more people are texting. What does that mean?

According to loads of communications research, texting and email through whatever means you wish is a cause for serious concern in academic circles because it is seen as negatively affecting the way we communicate. It's "causing anti-social behaviour, reducing face-to-face communication and making it less personal."

Rick Pukis, an associate professor of communications at Augusta State University, has said that texting may affect the way we interact with each other. In one of many articles on how communication is breaking down, written in August 2008, Pukis states, "Text messaging has made us a very impersonal society today. People are not communicating, not using facial expression, like smiling so when they get back into a situation where they're talking to someone, they don't smile."

We may be constantly "connecting" but are we "communicating"?

In that same article, William Shea, a university student, adds that he "feels widespread cell phone use and text-messaging is hurting human communication, not helping it. "Rather than face interpersonal dealings head on, we can hide behind our phone until we can talk at our convenience – or not talk at all.'" People can text instead, which is not well-thought out sentences, but abbreviated communication which can be problematic when trying to express our feelings, he says.

"Is there a real problem with replacing 'you' with 'u'? It isn't as though we are going to forget how to spell the word, but we may forget how to communicate in intelligent, thought-out sentences," Shea said.

In another story, Pukis stated that emails are also a problem: "Someone can whip one out in thirty seconds and they're like, 'Ahh, I took care of this, I communicated. You didn't really communicate, you just shot out a one-line sentence over to me and didn't really convey any thoughts."

We may be forgetting or never learning how to engage in real, thoughtful, articulated, nuanced interpersonal conversations about ideas – live speech. Interactive, real, emotionally coloured communication. If you can't articulate your feelings, what do you do, I wonder? Do you know who you really are?

Communication takes practice. Conversation is an art. Who's teaching that? Twitter? Facebook? MySpace? Email? Even if it's in real time?

If you're a young kid, without a way to "process" your feelings verbally, to understand and express them accurately, to be heard and listened to, you can get so frustrated you lash out and act out. If you're used to engaging with a computer or cellphone – an inanimate object – I guess you don't get any practice in dealing with real emotions in a thoughtful rational human interpersonal way. That can cause anxiety, stress, frustration, anger. Built up emotions that explode when you're confronted with someone who doesn't respond to you the way you want or expect them to.

Telephones, even landlines and not cellphones, I suggest, have their purposes. 

The first contact I had in July 1999 with the man that I married almost nine years ago was a voicemail message quickly followed by a telephone call. His voice mail message was lovely, but it was our live telephone conversation that did me in.

In a split second, I fell in love with the sound of his voice. It was, and remains, a deep, resonant, smooth and warm bass inflected with his charming sense of fun. The most mellifluous voice I've ever heard. 

When I asked him, thinking he was around my age, how old he was, he quipped, "I'm 63, but I don't know how I got here." 

So he's 13 years older than I. Who cares about numbers with a man of such wit? I adored him even more and desperately wanted to meet him, which I did the following week. It was love at first sight and in about three weeks, we'll be celebrating the 10th anniversary of that meeting. We've never looked back.

How can one gauge sincerity, warmth, charm through bald black words on a white screen? With emotions? Give me a break.  

I venture to guess that had this exchange happened not on the telephone, but on email or Facebook, I would never have considered going out with him in the first place. That number – 63 – would have scared me off. 

Today, I cannot imagine my life without him. And the sound of his voice still thrills me.

But kids today are denied the richness of this quality of communication and on top of all that, parents want fast results. Quick fixes. Pop a pill, get results. That's how we're being conditioned.

This is all part of the "McDonaldization" of psychiatry and life in the 21st Century. Pills that numb minds and erase symptoms – Bandaid solutions that do nothing to help gain an understanding of where a child's real problems may lie. A diagnosis is made in 20 minutes and out comes the prescription pad. This can be potentially and severely harmful to these children. Their brains and bodies are developing and growing. These drugs are meant for adults. And they cause adults severe problems, too.

Who are these drugs really helping? Parents? Teachers? All of whom want compliant children. Square Pegs.

Don't believe me?

Have a look at the 2008 PBS documentary The Medicated Child. Children who used to be labelled with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and given Ritalin are now labelled Bipolar and given cocktails of atypical antipsychotics. Thanks in part to the non-scientific, highly anecdotal research of psychiatrist (not child psychiatrist) Demitri Papolos and his wife Janice, authors of a 1999 book, The Bipolar Child. 

Massachusetts General Hospital child psychiatrist Joseph Biederman is currently under investigation for his unorthodox ties to the drug manufacturers. He is credited with making the quantum diagnostic leap and changing ADHD in children to Bipolar Disorder, thus sanctioning the use of an entirely different class of medication.

He's also one of a growing list of academic psychiatric researchers who have pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars for substantiating highly unethical research practices which advocate many new ways and growing populations, including children, to whom drugs can be prescribed. 

Don't even ask me, right now, to go into the kerfuffle brewing over the up and coming revised edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illnesses. That's for another post, but when the DSM-V is released in 2011, watch for all kinds of new "disorders" and "pre-conditions" for which drugs can be used. 

Needless to say, the drug companies are laughing all the way to the bank. Greed. So what else is new?

What are these root causes? There's no easy answer.

They can be many – including genetic, environmental, intrauterine, biochemical, social, cultural, psychological and even parental. Abuse comes in many forms, including neglect. And what has technology done to improve the childhood experience, I wonder.

First of all, the whole notion of "play" has changed dramatically. Socialization of children has changed. I think it's been sacrificed so that kids can accelerate through school. Before they're physically and mentally developed to handle the material they're expected to absorb.

When I was in nursery school and kindergarten in the early 1950s, we played. We socialized. In the sand box and outside in the fresh air. We had naps on mats and had snacks – juice and cookies. We played musical instruments like the triangle and drums. We finger painted and did lots of arts and crafts. We had recess. It was fun.

Now kids go into day care and then nursery school and junior kindergarten and their childhood is compressed. They start learning numbers and the alphabet long before they hit grade one. After school, they're rarely if ever are allowed to run freely around their neighbourhoods playing simple games without constant supervision. Understandable, but sad. Neighbourhoods have become dangerous for kids.

Also, kids see their parents on computers for hours and are given play computers at the earliest of ages. They mimic their parents. They watch more television. Computers can become their closest companions and by the time they can use a real one, they often are. 

Between video games and then later on, email, they learn to engage with a machine far more easily than they do with each other. Play is about free engagement. Being social. Face-to-face social. Talking and engaging social activities together. 

But, many children, not all, are denied that unless their parents actively plan "play-dates" – a term that didn't exist when I was a kid.

Free, social engagement – not planned activities and lessons – seems to have diminished enormously today. I won't even begin, as well, on all the nutritional changes – the fast foods and processed foods – that have replaced the home made-from-scratch meals that I was given throughout my childhood. Balanced meals. In my case, my histrionic behaviour cannot be blamed on nutrition or the lack of play and/or the lack of a loving, caring, stay-at-home mother. I'm still histrionic, by the way. That's my nature.

Too much has changed and we're not much happier. In fact recent research has shown that women are less happy than they've been in years. 

With the advent of digital technology, the computer, the cellphone, voicemail, email, Facebook and the subsequent demise of what we used to call interpersonal communication and the lost art of conversation, children are invariably being seriously affected along with their parents.

In 1969, I studied Applied Communications Media at Seneca College, where I now teach. We studied all kinds of communications – journalism, television, advertising, public speaking, radio, photography, film, drama, including a required course in communications theory. Our text was called "The Human Dialogue" and one of its two editors was the late Ashley Montagu. I treasure that book. This is a brilliant anthology of 49 essays by some of the greatest thinkers of all time, including – Marshall McLuhan, Martin Buber, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Albert Camus, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Anatol Rapoport and Hannah Arendt. Reading it changed my life and I'm going to reread it. I feel I need to refresh my memory today.

I can't help but think that the human dialogue is dying out. Taking with it a quality of our basic humanity. Kindness, caring, tenderness, compassion. No wonder depression is on the rise. This is a human tragedy. Things are breaking down. I'm worried.

Is anybody in our society really interested in listening? In hearing and interpreting the sounds of our voices? Especially the voices of our children? 

Comments

[Francesca]

Yes...and no.

I bought a cell phone plan when my daughter was 14, a phone for her and phone for me. Came about when I forgot we were meeting downtown and I went home, and for a whole hour I had no idea where she was and how to reach her. She simply climbed on a bus and came home, but I was freaking. (there's a whole history to the freaking the most important was that we'd just moved to a new city)

The phone freed me from helicopter parenting. I could text her and she could text me. It wasn't until the local folk festival 5 months later did we really take the communication to the next level. Pre-dating Twitter we'd text each other as to which stage we were at, who we liked and when we were getting together for dinner.

She's now 19 and went to college 6 hours north of me, very challenging having raised her the last 8 years by myself. But we could text (for free) and keep in touch. I knew her well enough to know when I needed to call, a turn of phrase, a crisis she wouldn't openly ask for help on, but would appreciate the immediate call that followed.

A few weeks ago her phone buzzed with a text at 7:30 am. Anyone who knows my daughter knows not to bother her until she's been awake for at least an hour. So I looked at her phone, a college friend had broken her leg! I woke the kid up to tell her a friend needed to talk. She knows I respect her privacy and only snoop for real reasons.

I don't think one form of communication is better or worse than another. I think they all have their time and place.

I would think video games (an oh yes we have 3 systems in our house - the Wii is MINE!!) do more harm in terms of isolating children, than methods of communication.

Our children get this style of communication, we stuggle with it, because we don't get it.

Thanks to Facebook I'm friends with her new college friends.

Yes as parents we can't use Facebook and texts as a subsitute for good parenting, making the phone calls, sitting down and just talking, but it is a new way of communicating. everything has a time and place.

[Deb]

I posed this question on my Facebook after reading your entry, and already have two answers "Yes teenagers are losing their abilities to communicate". That's from mothers who notice. Think of those that don't notice, or sadly do, and don't care.

But, I can see that Facebook sometimes has its use. For a shut-in, who can connect with friends and family who are at work. Or a stay at home mum such as myself, with kids, and staying in touch with friends. Or a quick text message from a friend whose boy had to be taken to the Children's Hospital. A brief "He's okay, just bruised" text message helped us all breathe a bit easier.

But, like anything moderation is the key. Why too much texting is bad: it does lose the very precious, very necessary face-to-face caring we can show.

Thanks for a wonderful rant on the evils of texting, and the joy of face-to-face communication. Sad, terribly sad on the vast increase of atypical anti-psychotics given to kids. Just, so terribly sad that they are seen as answers.

[Sandy Naiman]

Hi Francesca and Deb,

I hope you don't mind if I respond to your comments together.

First, forgive the length of this post. You're right, Deb. It was a bit of a rant. Usually, I'm a little more succinct and focused, but so many hot and resonant buttons were pushed in the last few days. Especially the disturbing news of the research finding from the University of British Columbia about the exponential rise and potentially dangerous use of neuroleptic drugs in young Canadian children.

So I let myself go. I should have done two posts instead of one. But there seems to be a connection. I learned an important lesson.

Anyway, Francesca.

I have no problem with teens having cell phones and TALKING on them. We gave my stepdaughter a cellphone when she was 16 and she kept us abreast of where she was and we always knew that if she ever needed our help, she was just a phone call away. She didn't do this by texting. My husband and I refuse to "text" on our cellphones. She is now 22 and calls us. Email is not the way we communicate.

However, my concern is the ubiquitous use in too many relationships, child to child, perhaps child to parent, of Texting on cellphones, Smartphones and through email, instead of having live conversations.

This growing trend away from conversation, I don't believe, is emotionally healthy. And it must be very "isolating" for children, especially young children, who don't get practice in verbal communication skills and human dialoguing. How many families all sit down at the dinner table at the same time and have conversations? The research on that is not pretty.

On the subway, there's no conversation. Not even eye contact. People wear their earphones and are locked in their iPod worlds of music or thumbing away on their Blackberries and iPhones. That wasn't always the case. I used to meet some fascinating people riding on the TTC. Now everyone is in an invisible bubble. Riding on public transit if very quiet.

People may be constantly connected, but I ask you what is the quality of that connection? As for Facebook, I use it. Not much. And I've met some interesting people and reconnected with longtime friends, too.

At the same time, I'm sure you've heard of the Facebook parties, when someone decides to "meet" his Facebook friends and invites them all – perhaps hundreds of them – to a have a drink and meet each other in a local watering hole? Of those hundreds, usually one turns up.

I wonder about the depth of Facebook "friendships" unless you go to the trouble to meet a Facebook "friend" face-to-face, as we have, and spend real time relating to each other. That takes an investment of time, energy and commitment.

Just wondering.

New ways of communicating are fine as long as they don't eradicate the art of conversation and the act of listening. Really actively listening and helping someone you care about feel that they are being heard and that you feel for them. A touch on the hand. A smile. A shared laugh. You can't do that online. Yet. Thank you for commenting and sharing so honestly. I know you are a wonderful mother to your daughter and you do converse. I hope all mothers and fathers are as involved with their children as you are in all the ways you are!

And Deb, I thank you for your kind and thoughtful note. Please keep me posted on the results of your Facebook poll. You are absolutely right when you state that "moderation is the key" – this is true for everything.

Since I had that conversation with my friend who wasn't talking on the telephone with her amour, she and he are now talking more on the telephone, I'm happy to report. She told him she felt she needed it. Good move. And it can be very romantic.

The sound of a live human voice speaks volumes and far more than the words said. They are just a form of coded communication. Language is complex.

We aren't talking about epistolary relationships of days gone by when lovers would sit and compose letters using pen and ink. Then mail them and wait for a response. Time played a huge role in the quality of this pre-cybernetic age-old process.

I think we all need to hear human voices. Sadly, we don't "enough" today, with the speedy demands of instant messaging, email, the space constraints of Twitter and other online communication tools rarely in sync with the two people communicating.

Romance, compassion, empathy – nuanced human dialoguing has to suffer. And is changing.

And we, humans, must be suffering, too.

I thank you both with all my heart for your candour, your insights, your precious contributions to our ongoing dialoguing, here. This is what builds community.

Affectionately,
sln

[Sandy Naiman]

Sonia was having problems posting her comment, so I am posting for her.

She writes:

Hello Sandy,

I really appreciate the matter-of-fact way you say, "and yes, I am still histrionic" ... that brought a giggle and a moment of happiness

Hello Deb,

Adult ownership of games is a treasure - my Nintendo DS is exactly that! Mine! ... I especially like the Sudoku!

Hello all,

My experience with communication technology: Canadians love to talk on the phone. I don't. When friends call, it is to set a time-place to meet, then hang up so we can get on with living. In contrast, my experience in southwest China: Chinese people love to send "sms" (short text messages) that vary between professional meetings to Twitter-like "I am washing my hair now". I enjoyed the sms because I could connect with friends across the country for a very (I mean very) small fee - nothing like what we have here in North America!

I also come from a stay-at-home-mother environment. She limited our TV time, encouraged us to play outside, used curfew as a precaution (not a punishment) and the idea that if we (any of her five children) left a clear note (author, time & date, reason for absence from home, destination), after the age of about 10-12 we were "free" to explore the world around us. Summer school was fun - games, movies, visits to out-of-town museums, theme parks, etc., as well as remedial in language arts, math and basic science. These latter were taught by people fascinated with those subjects - not 'regular' school teachers who would rather be on holidays.

I see all of these experiences as convincing evidence that spending time with people - all sorts of people - helps to develop a sense of community of which we now speak as an "ideal from the past" the same way we refer to Chivalry.

[Tammy MacKenzie]

Great post Sandy!
The problem is that we have gotten so busy, trying to keep up with so much in the entire world, that we no longer find/make time for people. Actual, live bodies that we can make eye contact with when we talk and exchange touch - a handshake, touch on a shoulder, hug - it makes us stop and live in the moment.
And our children learn it from us, through emulating our behaviour, and through our being too busy to be with them.
And the turning to drugs to tame the wild child who doesn't know how to cope, needs parental attention and time, is the worst symptom of the problem: the need to spend time with people, instead of throw moneying at something for a quick fix that keeps everyone else happy.
Today I have had 2 things provide very potent reminders of the need to stop, step back, step out of the crazy busy routines of life and focus on what's really important:
- a last-minute decision to attend a CD release party for the founder of the poetry collective I belong to. My daughter wanted to go. So we went together, spent the evening listening to great poetry from many wonderful, diverse people, in a small bookstore. Laughs, tears, conversation, hugs, interaction with engaged people.
- this article.
Thanks Sandy.
xo Tammy

[Sandy Naiman]

Hi Tammy,

Thank you for your kind words...

I wonder what we're so "busy" with? And perhaps it's time for a priority check. Busy at the expense of losing our connections with people? Our real "quality" connections? Face-to-face? Eye-to-eye? Touching connections. Laughing connections. Hugging connections?

At the expense of the emotional health and well-being of our children?

Just wondering? I think you know what I mean, but what about the rest of the world.

Here, we're thinking about these connections.

What about the rest of the world? The busy world. How I despise that word – busy.

Again, many thanks, Tammy.

Hugs to you!
sln

[Laura K]

Indeed we do seem so busy these days. Many of us (including myself) are so concerned with "saving time", but it seems if we were really saving time, we wouldn't be so busy, right? I think so many of us are trying to do so many things at a given point in our lives that we rarely enjoy any one of those things by living in that moment and that moment alone with little thought of what's next. It's always just rush rush rush to the next thing.
That being said, I can't say I quite understand the obsession with twitter, and texting lengthy conversations that seems to be the norm for my generation (I'm 27) and younger. From my point of view, it seems like teens do indeed form real and strong relationships and the texting is actually a sign of strength in those relationships...having to communicate in some form or another at all times with their friends, even if they may have seen their friends earlier that day.
As for the overall status of communication, I think email is more to blame...in my experience people aren't texting about what's really important however, before email one would have picked up the phone, interacted directly to the other party and cleared up most, if not all, miscommunications, sticking points and ways in which things could go wrong. Nowadays, that same conversation might occur over 20 emails back and forth. And people think they're saving time by sending off that email, which quickly evolves into hours of sub-par correspondence when a 20 minute conversation might have achieved a better result.

[Ashley]

I agree very much with the concept of the art of the conversation being slowly lost among teenagers and young people, and I wanted to share a little bit of my perspective as someone from that demographic.

I often feel that I have very few friends because not only do most people my age avoid talking and connecting over the phone, they also staunchly avoid social situations in which they might be forced to talk to other people. Trying to get together with some friends has proved very difficult and, in the end not worth it, because they either A) don't reply to my invitation, B) decline without giving a reason, or C) casually agree to come and then without any effort to get in touch with me and apologize for having to cancel, they don't show up.

The only times I ever get together with friends my own age there is always some kind of buffer or excuse for them not to have to talk to each other (music cranked to the highest volume possible, copious amounts of alcohol so you get so plastered you lose the motor skills necessary to speak, a movie or TV being watched, or the saddest of all which usually happens when the host of the party is male: watching a select few play video games). The only friends I have who are able to get together and have lively, fun conversations with are the people I've met from doing community theatre and most of them are at least 15 years older than myself.

I'm of the opinion that texting, e-mailing and facebook-ing are great for quick messages and for situations where it is otherwise difficult to talk on the phone or face-to-face (such as one of my only close friends my age who goes to university very far away and long-distance phone-calls are quite expensive but texting is free so we message each other in between our phone-calls every 3 months or so).

I feel like the only person my age who understands that these methods of communication should under no circumstances replace real connections. So I guess I just wanted to say thanks for posting about this topic and shedding some light on it, and also I hope that we can find someway to work on reversing this disconnect someday soon, because people my age who still value a good conversation are having a bit of a rough time finding someone to talk to!