Matthew DeFazio
Blog 1
Section 005
In the Daily Times Article Is
Texting Killing the Art of Communication, readers are exposed to a new negative
view on texting. Texting, while very effective and time efficient, also
starting to create problems for humans and human interaction. And while these problems created by texting
are trivial right now, experts agree that direct human conversation will begin
to suffer unless we change the trends now. But first, to discover just how
texting is killing direct human communication, one must first look at how
communication works.
Recall
the Communication Model that we talked about earlier in class. In the process of communication, we see at
the minimum two people interaction which each other, a sender and a receiver. During the course of the communication
process, a sender must develop a message then encode it in a way that sender
will be able to decode it and understand what the original message was. However, the article hits a key criticism of
texting that is harming the communication process; the lack of use of nonverbal
symbols. In class we learned of three
key components of nonverbal communication that texting frankly just lacks:
paralanguage, proxemics, and kinesics. Proxemics is the spatial communication
between two people, as in how close you sit to someone or if you lean in while
talking to them. Over text, how can you
portray yourself leaning in when someone talks about something interesting or
to show you actually care about what is being said? As seen in the article, a
father asks his daughter why she never talks to her boyfriend or is close to
him, to which she responds she has been texting him. The father then replies “You’re
not even really talking to him.” This quote shows that while we can use text to
communicate, it shows no signs of how close that person is. The person texting
might not even be them, as it could be a friend with their phone, hence showing
texting has no proxemics value to it once so ever. Another element of nonverbal
communication missing from texting is paralanguage, or communication through
the way you say things. Can you portray an exact you feel through a line of
characters on a screen? Probably not. In communication, humans demonstrate how
they feel by changing how they speak while they talk, such as changing their
pitch, tone. Short of typing in all
caps, text cannot portray this. A final
part of nonverbal communication missing from texting is kinesics, or the use of
body movement to help deliver a message.
For example in the article, there is an excerpt from a professor who
comments that her students will not look her in the eye while talking to her. While
communication occurs between both the professor and the student, without the
student making eye contact with the professor there is no way to know if the communication
between either of them was effective. Simple things such as using your hands
while talking, making eye contact, and even a simple pat on the back may seem trivial,
but are actually a key part to help deliver the message. Texting cannot show others
you doing of the above, which leaves nothing for the receiver of your message
to see other than a combination of 12 pt. characters on a screen no bigger than
the size of their hand. Hence, the process of communication is actually being
hindered by the use of texting to communicate.
In
conclusion, although texting is a great and convenient form of communication, it
is slowly killing the communication process as humans know it, and may eventually
end direct human communication all together.
Texting is, in a way, as shallow as it seems: written characters on a
screen. One cannot portray nonverbal communication
through texts, and considering that close to 60% of all human communication is
nonverbal, we have a problem. Yet, one does not have to give up texting, but
merely just only use it when it is appropriate instead of all the time. It is
up to us to help reverse the trend of dying direct commination. And it all
starts by hitting the delete button on that message and saying it in person.
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