Slashdot Mirror
Has Texting Replaced Talking For Teens?
Hugh Pickens writes "Sue Shellenbarger has an interesting essay in the WSJ where she talks about the 2,000 incoming text messages her son racks up every month — more than 60 two-way communications via text message every day — and her surprise that 2,000 monthly text messages is about average for today's teenagers. 'I have seen my son suffer no apparent ill effects (except a sore thumb now and then), and he reaps a big benefit, of easy, continuing contact with many friends,' writes Shellenbarger. 'Also, the time he spends texting replaces the hours teens used to spend on the phone; both my kids dislike talking on the phone, and say they really don't need to do so to stay in touch with friends and family.' But does texting make today's kids stupid, as Mark Bauerlein writes in his book ' The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future? 'I don't think so. It may make them annoying, when they try to text and talk to you at the same time,' writes Shellenbarger, adding, 'I have found him more engaged and easier to communicate with from afar, because he is constantly available via text message and responds with a faithfulness and speed that any mother would find reassuring.'"
I like to see articles that spread the idea of cultural change being positive.
"Feeling the press of complexity upon the emptiness of life, people are fearful of the thought that at any moment things might be thrust out of control. They fear change itself, since change might smash whatever invisible framework seems to hold back chaos for them now. For most Americans, all crusades are suspect, threatening. The fact that each individual sees apathy in his fellows perpetuates the common reluctance to organize for change." -- Students for Democratic Society, Port Huron Statement, June 15, 1962
Fifty years later, this same generation now looks fearfully upon social change it once demanded... And yet I see no fault in any generation we have a memory of. Such is the nature of the human condition: We fear what we do not understand, and we're predisposed to stick with what works instead of trying something new. I can hear the voices of generations past: "Leave trying new things to the young, right? We only have so much energy... Put it towards something we know will pay off."
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I couldn't agree with you more, and there was a recent /. article about a week ago on that. Texting just serves as a distraction in important situations, and isn't much different in having someone take a break every few minutes to go chat with someone at the water fountain.
..........FULL STOP.
What happened even ten years ago now has only limited importance.
With all due respect, that's a horrendously dumb statement. If you really do mean that, I think you've just perfectly illustrated one of the issues with current generations!
Don't judge people based on their memory or caring for esoteric issues that might have affected life in the "distant" past (for people my age, that's anything more than about 30 years ago) -- they know just as many fungible facts as their older counterparts, it's just about a smaller period of time.
That's just the thing. Humans have been around a long time, we've done a lot of things, and we've thought about a lot of things. If you limit yourself to only caring about things that happened in the last decade (or as you later expand it, the last 30 years) you're missing out on the vast majority of the human experience! Art, music, literature, philosophy. If you don't care about any of those things > 30 years old, you're both ignorant and missing out (IMHO of course).
It's this exact same kind of myopic "ignore all but the present" viewpoint that makes people make the same mistakes over and over and over again. Moreover, to people who don't have such a myopic view, the myopes are just really uninteresting people by and by.
I'm in my late-20s. I'm not one to claim that certain generations are better or not, because as one historiographer wrote (roughly paraphrased) each generation is less than the one before it, the youth today are merely shadows of their parents. Everybody has ALWAYS felt the next generation is going to hell, and we've done ok so far. Or take the ancient Greeks who lamented the anemic memories of students who learned reading and writing. Etc. My concerns are more along the lines that I think that the MASSES of the facebook-texting-always in contact-always on the grid-don't have to remember ANYTHING because I can look it up instantly generations (of which I am a solid member) are prone to change society in ways I personally don't like and don't think are positive. Thus is life though.
I work with a lot of < 30 year olds. I am < 30.
The problem with the Humanity 2.0 types that you seem to be describing is that those people who are constantly bragging about multitasking, tend to be REALLY bad at it without realizing. Sometimes being able to twitter, facebook, and look up facts on wikipedia at the same time is NOT the desired or needed skillset. In my experience, the younger generations (self included) DO hate traditional hierarchies--with good cause! I quit my government job that I enjoyed because the bureaucracy was just unbearable. They currently have a HUGE attrition rate of 20-somethings who feel the same way. Yet, I've also found that those who rail the most against the hierarchies and authority frequently seem to be the ones who need the most oversight to get anything accomplished. Ironic?
Your most telling statement:
And they bitch about people being 10 minutes late to their shift -- and think that's more important than the fact that they're doing about twenty different jobs, holding six conversations at once on several different mediums at the same time and doing it well.
Maybe you just THINK you're doing it well. Being late to a shift/work IS a big deal (if consistently so). It's pretty selfish to think otherwise. You're absolutely right that we are living in an "accelerated" world and that a lot of older practices are obsolete and diminishing as we speak. The inward facing solipsism you express is troubling though--ever think that there might be value in other ways of working, other people's viewpoints, beyond your preconceived notions of how the World 2.0 ought to work?
When you say
Our generation has an excellent strength: Balancing many often competing objectives while working in a very socially fluid environment
I'd agree and add:
Our generation has an horrible weakness: Actually getting things done
You may have seen several slashdot articles relating to this (first one is pretty interesting IMHO)
Habitual Multitaskers Do It Badly
http://slashdot.org/story/09/08/25/1245221/Habitual-Multitaskers-Do-It
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/27/2221228
When I was teenager my parents would constantly tell us not to talk on the phone so long.
They always suggest we try "writing" to each other. Written communication is a "lost art" they would tell us.
Now everyone is writing instead of talking... I guess my parents should be happy!
I take it you haven't seen all the reports about falling IQ scores.
No. I can't say I have. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
Again, like I said--completely without judgement--there's no problem with communicating intelligibly with other people, and 99.9% of people manage to communicate with other people. Unless you're brain damaged or have some serious developmental / physiological issues, being able to communicate with SOMEONE usually isn't an issue.
If I'm hiring you for a job though, I need to know that you're going to be able to (e.g.) write a coherent email that ANYBODY will understand--not just your personal social clique. If I wrote for technical support to a company, my bank, etc and got bank an email in my teenage sister's slang, I wouldn't have a clue what it all meant. Likewise if I got a reply back in old english, it would be equally unintelligible. Societies work by being mutually intelligible! Proper english--like it or not--is the standard. You can speak southern, ebonics, internet slang, whatever you want to those who understand it, but it's useless if the recipient doesn't.
Our generation has an excellent strength: Balancing many often competing objectives while working in a very socially fluid environment.
That's not as great a job skill as it sounds, really. When I read your status report for the week and it says "Got 50% of the way through five projects" that's not as impressive as the older guy's whose report reads "Finished and shipped that one critical project."
And there's the rub: It's not a reflection of a person's intelligence, but rather their background, if they don't have a certain linguistic skillset.
All the reason more why opining the virtues of Internet-speak and text messaging slang is so appalling!
I grew up in the south, in a majority-minority area. Anybody can overcome their backgrounds, and people do so every day. It's tough, and probably not fair, but just the way it is. Willful ignorance is worse, agreed.