The Problem with Texting
Texting is problematic. While addressing logistics quickly is helpful, emotional content is too complex for such a simple medium. Important ideas get pitched into a vat (your cell phone) with five-thousand other way less important data points. Immediacy can be expected when very few people actually utilize texting with immediacy. Then the delay in response can feel hurtful, completely unnecessarily so. There are way too many characters to be read briefly, when you're on-the-go in between events that require your present attention.
Clients bring in texts to discuss with me all the time: paragraphs-long, hurtful, complex interactions that span multiple days. Ghosted relationships over text. Sometimes clients want to spend A LOT of our session time re-reading those texts, navigating relationships that have essentially happened in their cell phones. I wonder,
"What all has been happening in real life as your heart and mind have been tangled up in this virtual conversation?"
Offense is easily taken via text. Conversations are dropped. Completely unnecessary information is shared because it's way too convenient to have all your friends in your pocket. All the noise makes us have to turn the volume down, and then we miss the most important stuff.
We all need an editor and impulsive texting prevents the editing process. Or the emotional unclarity of texting makes the editing so intense (going over and over and over before sending) that we completely lose the thread of communication. Anxiety spikes. Or the semblance of distance makes it easier to say things way harsher than we would ever speak in person.
The ability to text also sets us up to fail in that while we are able to have eight-hundred contacts in our phones, we cannot actually effectively interact with eight-hundred people. (I am confessing my own failure in this. I just looked--I have one-thousand and twenty-two contacts in my phone). If even one-tenth of those people texted me in a day, even just once, I would have one-hundred and two people to respond to. That's silly. My body cannot possibly respond to one-hundred and two people in a meaningful way on any given day.
So here are the texting standards I'd like us to live by.
Texting is primarily for basic logistical cooperation. What's happening, with whom, when, where and how. Not why. Not how you feel about it.
Texting is cheap. Cheap generally means lower quality. Texting needn't cost you much emotionally. Just the facts. It can't produce depth of intimacy. If you really want to reach out to someone, actually reach out. Call, set up a meeting, send a card you wrote yourself. If relationships matter to you, spend your time and energy effectively investing in them. You will only be able to to this with a reasonable amount of people.
If you're having big emotions, manage yourself. Prepare yourself for a productive conversation where you can effectively, lovingly communicate with another human face-to-face. Don't text those big emotions. It's just not the medium for it. (See #1).
Fun gifs and memes are ok, just don't expect a response. Sure, make your friend smile. Do it because you love them, not because you need attention. If you need attention build a friendship in person, where your body (and their body) can register being loved. (See #1, 2 and 3).
One small exception: There is a particular circumstances that would make room for a different type of texting, which I would call written dialogue. It's where all parties involved are immediately on their phones and focused solely on the conversation being had. This type of coversation, in real time, is merely a slowed down, written form of talking with someone, similar to over the phone. In the digital sense it's considered "chatting." For those of us who are much better communicators in written form, this can help us process effectively and be more careful and gentle in what we're sharing. While there is still a risk of inaccurate emotional transmission, you have a better chance of correcting it quickly.
Happy (Not) Texting!
