The Tyranny of Texts
⏲ 5-minute read | last updated 6 days, 23 hours ago
"I don’t like to be readily accessible to any human being at any time.” - Woody Harrelson
Texting is an inherently low-bandwidth communication method. Often, our brains don't handle it well - leading to some problems.
Miscommunication
Texting is ripe for miscommunication due to a lack of real-time feedback. Sprinkle in variable emotional states, vocabularies, energy levels, interests, and time restrictions - and you're left with way more opportunities to trip up than the average in-person conversation (which has better built-in error correction).
Avoiding these pitfalls requires a focus on:
- Word choice
- Trust and safety
But the medium encourages:
- High frequency
- Informality
These points are often at odds with each other, and the result is miscommunication. It's a risk inherent to the medium.
Texting Slowly (And Less)
If texting is riskier (greater chance of miscommunication) than real-time conversations, it would make sense to slow it down (text less) and opt for less (reduce risk). This has several other built-in benefits, too.
Context-Switching
When you’re constantly looking down at your phone, whether you like it or not, you’re “ramping down” on your current task and “ramping up” on the context of the text. When you look at a notification, at a minimum, you’re making decisions on:
- Is this important enough to respond to?
- Is this important enough to respond to now?
- If not - when am I going to respond to this?
That’s at least three questions you need to answer just from the observation that a new text has arrived! Slowing down limits this context-switching.
Information-Seeking
Many texts are strictly transactional, and your message is one of several lines of inquiry the sender has launched. A shotgun approach. Of course, the method that yields the fastest result wins - and you’re under no obligation to be the fastest.
Slowing down your response time to information-seeking requests trains others that texting you won't always get them an answer (plus, truly urgent requests will turn into phone calls). Eventually - you'll stop getting these sorts of texts altogether. They'll find their answer another way, lose interest, or call you!
Expectations & Boundaries
Expectations for response time start early in your initial interactions. Respond quickly, and you put a tick in the “this person responds quickly” box. It’s a commitment, of sorts. The more you respond quickly, the higher the expectation for you to continue to do so.
We tend to be quicker to forgive mild transgressions and etiquette breaches over text because of its inherent limitations. But in a high text-volume environment, it’s easier to take advantage of this by skipping courtesies and reducing context.
Slow texting provides a counterweight to this by lowering expectations for the speed of response, thereby lowering expectations overall.
Insecurities & Etiquette
Texts are an interesting combination of informality and precision.
- They’re informal in that they need not carry the required punctuation and prose of a letter, are short due to device constraints, and carry an expectation of brevity and directness.
- They're precise because they're a written record that (after being sent) are relatively permanent - each word is a commitment.
Often, we opt to have difficult, complicated, or important conversations over text because of this unique combination. It's easier because you get to say what you want to say just the way you want to say it. But it leaves a certain disregard for the receiver because there isn't built-in error correction that real-time conversations have.
The Synaptic Ping Society
As humans, we’re always transmitting information to each other. The closer our proximity, the more we bounce bits of information off each other. A glance, smile, head nod, or a short “hey” - are our ways of taking the temperature of the room and understanding our environment. The edge of this local perception, let's call that our social horizon, has historically been limited to sight and sound.
As texting has evolved to its current (mostly) feature-complete stage, we too have evolved with our social etiquette. We’ve also (unwittingly or not) extended our social horizon into the digital realm. Short, intermittent texts during the day supplement what was once only local, environmental pings. Now, we function a bit more like little computers talking to each other on the same network saying “Hey, I’m here, I’m still alive.”
And maybe the analogy of computers talking to each other is an accurate one. If smartphones are extensions of ourselves, wouldn’t it make sense that we’re evolving to incorporate similar characteristics?
What's challenging is that this is not all bad. The irony of looking at this issue is that modernity otherwise encourages living very disconnected lives. Career ambitions at the expense of personal time, mobility at the expense of community, online at the expense of real life.
Texting plays an interesting role in bridging the social gap caused by these trends. It's the gift of extending our consciousness to interact with family, loved ones, and friends - regardless of distance. Arguably, this is time well spent.
Perhaps, as with most things - it’s a double-edged sword, the risk of injury depending on supplementation vs. substitution. Conscious choice, or unconscious habit.
Regardless, the larger we extend our social horizon the more upkeep that's required. It is a true commitment that we should be happy to make, as long as we know we’re making it.