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10 March 2008
FYEO
Interesting article in the NYT yesterday -- Text Generation Gap: U R 2 Old (JK) -- about kids, teens, and adults using cell phones for phoning and texting, and how the technology is both alienating and bonding (something Ingmar Bergman might have explored if he were writing and directing now ...).
A father in the NYT article says that he and his wife banned cellphone use at the dinner table for their daughter because they "worried about the distraction. '[Kids] become unaware of your presence,' he said. [He] is well aware of how destabilizing cellphones, iPods and hand-held video game players can be to family relations. 'I see kids text under the table at the restaurant,' he said. 'They don't teach them etiquette anymore.' Some children, he said, watch videos in restaurants. 'They don't know that's the time to carry on a conversation,' he said."
At dinner last night, in a fairly nice restaurant, I noticed that the teenaged boy near us was looking into his lap during most of his family's (?) meal. He was pretty much immobile for the better part of an hour. I assumed he was either asleep or texting (I hoped it was one of those two) -- probably texting the other teenaged boy at the table, who also had a cell phone.
This doesn't seem much different to me than reading a book at the table, which I certainly tried to do when I was growing up. Of course, this wasn't allowed in my house, because, naturally, we were supposed to be learning that dinner is a "time to carry on a conversation," but there are many nights for most kids when anything is preferable to forced conversation with your parents. Dinner often seemed like wasted time to me when I was a teenager, and I wish I could say looking back that it wasn't, but it still feels the same even in retrospect. I had great conversations with both parents at lots of other times, but there was a dinner pall that seemed to settle on our table.
This will be news to no one, but besides jolly parent-child dinner conversation, letter-writing is another lost art these days: One college freshman explained that "'Texting is in between calling and sending an e-mail.'... Now he won't even consider writing a letter to his mother, Jan. 'It's too time consuming,' he said. 'You have to go to the post office. Instead, I can sit and watch television and send a text, which is the same thing.'"
When I read this, I thought of people of my acquaintance who would say that texting and letter-writing are definitely not the same thing. I guess it partly depends on what the letter would have said. Some letters I receive in the mail could be text messages without losing a bit of subtlety or charm. Maybe there is also something tactile and sensory about receiving a printed letter that receiving a text message or an email can never approximate.
But in reality, I would rather email someone (maybe while watching TV, making cookies, surfing online, or doing something else at roughly the same time), than call or write a mailed letter. (I don't text but that would be even more convenient, because I could do it while walking and other times when I'm nowhere near my laptop.)
Have teenagers ever wanted to write letters and notes, except perhaps to special penpals? Some of my nephews do send me real handwritten thank-you notes, but that's only when their mother sits them down, makes them write, addresses the envelopes, and mails the cards. (And they're aged 16-21.) Most of my nephews and neices and friends' kids email their thank-yous, which is fine with me. Then there are those who don't respond to gifts at all, but that hardly seems a technological issue.
(By the way, letter-writing doesn't have to include a trip to the post office, thanks to yet more technology. You can make your own stamps at Zazzle, have them mailed to you, and use them on letters that you leave in your mailbox or mailslot for the carrier, never having to leave your own yard/campus. Not as easy as a text message, though.)
06:35 Posted in pop culture | Permalink | Email this