I remember way back a hundred years ago when I was younger (I may be exaggerating …) when I would ask my best friend if she would be free to do something by … going to her house and knocking on the door. Mind you, we were young. This was BEFORE people would phone for everything and WAY before they would text or email everyone all the time.
I also remember spending time on the phone with friends — HOURS! — and old boyfriends (well, current boyfriends at that time). We would talk and talk and even though email came around in the 90s, it was never our number one way of communicating.
This is what it boggles my mind that we’re so dependent on email, messaging, and Facebook. A birthday comes around? Send an email! Or, better yet, wish the birthday person a happy birthday on Facebook! Have a question for someone? Heaven forbid you pick up the phone and call them, just send them an email. They’ll get it eventually.
Now, this isn’t to say that I’m innocent when it comes to NOT using the telephone. I’m actually quite notorious for screening my phone calls. I don’t do it for people I know — I have ringtones to alert me — but if I don’t know the number, it’s going to voice mail. And when a birthday comes around, I rarely phone a person.
What has made us like this? Why are we so afraid to pick up the phone? Is our time so precious that we have to send a quick email rather than giving up 15 minutes of our time to a friend or family member for a phone call? Is our time worth that much? When I think about what I do with my time — spend it on Twitter, or reading a book, or maybe watching a TV show — I realize that I could spare some moments to phone the people I love to chat. We just don’t chat anymore, unless we’re together in the same room, and it’s something I miss.
I have to admit that I don’t want to be one of those people talking to the person across the table from me through the messaging feature on my phone. When I get together with people, I want the phone to get put AWAY. I spent YEARS of my life not knowing about all of this technology, so I’m not sure why I let myself rely on it so much. We’re losing our voice with technology and we need to get it back.
Do you still make phone calls? Do you think that phoning people is a dying art?
