Firstly, long time no see! Yeah, I know, it has been over a year, but this is something I just have to get off of my chest.
I hate phones. Hate 'em, hate 'em, hate 'em!
They are great for communication such as organizing a meet up, and a healthy amount of texting is ok, but texting is out of hand. Not only texting, but snapchat, instagram, twitter, facebook, etc. I have accounts on all of these, and I have i-devices, that can be addicting, but not that addicting.
I have a good friend, Shelby let's call her. I love Shelby to pieces; she is sweet, kind, beautiful, and stands up for her friends, but when I am with her, she is never with me.
I had her over at my house last Saturday and I do not think she put down her phone, once. She was texting her BFF and her friend Jacob and her boyfriend Luke, and then she just had to check instagram, and then FB. Then she sent snapchats to all her friends and I was ticked.
I love her. She is my friend and if anything happened to her, I would be devastated, but really Shelby, really? Am I not good enough for you in the time and moment? This is a problem, like, a really big one.
Am I being whiny? Maybe. Am I overreacting? Probably.
Has it occurred to anyone else that maybe, just maybe, talking face to face with people can be rewarding? Perhaps I am old fashioned and need to modernize my ways of communication, but so much emotion is lost in a text. There is a constant feeling that we need to be 100% assessable 100% of the time to all of our friends, and it is overwhelming.
It is hard to hear pain in a text, or happiness, or humor, or (my favorite) sarcasm. So many people get hurt and offended because of instant messaging misunderstandings, that simply could have been fixed with real interaction.
Tell me, do we really need to be talking to three friends at once, or can we put down our phones just for a minute, and live in the now and place, and not in a textual-fantasy land?
