I don't know how many times, I have told my kids, get off the text, facebook, IM, whatever and make a "phone" call. There is something to be said for the sound of a human voice.
That's because you grew up with the telephone being a normal way to communicate with people. When the telephone first came out, and kids started calling eachother, their parents told them, "get off of the phone and go talk to him/her face to face... there's something to be said for looking a person in the eye when you talk to them".
For kids growing up now, the internet and cell phones are a normal way of communicating with other people. And for shy people such as this girl Chris is courting, it's actually a very good way of being able to open up to people. Instead of getting on a phone or talking face to face, not knowing what to say, and running away embarrased... they can take their time, figure out what they want to say, and even edit what they're going to say before they send it off. It gives shy people a lot more confidence when it comes to having contact with other people.
Now the flip side to that coin is.... I was painfully shy when I was a kid. I can remember the first few 'phone calls' to females I made, I was sweating profusely, I had a list of things to say all written down in front of me to talk about, and I rehearsed the whole conversation (at least the way I had figured it would go down) I was about to have many times before I actually called the girls in question. But once they got on the line, everything usually went to shit, and I wound up bumbling around my words like a retard and getting off of the phone as fast as I could! But since that was the only form of communicating back then, I simply HAD to get better at talking to girls, or I was never going to get LAID!!! LMAO
So I know a lot of people who've said that texting on your cell phone or sending instant messages over the internet does nothing for a person in the way of getting them prepared to actually talk to another human being, and that those forms of technology actually hurt communication skills because they never learn how to communicate verbally. But I suppose our grandparents probably said the exact same thing about telephones, that talking to someone you can't see is one thing, but learning how to look another man/woman in the eye and tell them something takes a completely different skill!
And I'd say both camps are right in a way. It seems to me that the art of looking a person in the eye while talking to them has really diminished over the years. Now-a-days it almost feels like a violation of personal space when someone comes and looks you in the eye when they talk to you, because not very many people do that anymore. I hope that doesn't become true of people actually talking to eachother with their mouth as well!
Oh well, they'll figure it out. One day todays kids will be the parents, and they'll be telling their kids to stop reading their friends minds, and text them like a 'normal' human being would do! After all there's something to be said about reading someone else's words!
