Ruminations on Robert Frost and Texting
In 1916, Robert Frost published the poem The Road Not Taken. The Road Not Taken has since become one of the most popular poems of modern time. The idea of taking the road less traveled appeals to us because it gives us hope that our actions, even if they differ from the social norm, will be the actions that lead us to later happiness, success, and development. The path less traveled is described by Frost as “grassy and wanted wear”. The less traveled road likely required more effort to pursue than the more traveled road. The ground was likely uneven and it may have been difficult for him to always find his way. In other words, taking the road less traveled required more effort to follow. However, perhaps because of the extra effort, Frost found that taking the road less traveled was important for his own development and success. Diverging roads still exist today and we are tasked with choosing between the most popular option or the “road less traveled”. An example is choosing whether to call or text someone. Texting is now more popular than calling for most cell phone users. When people are asked why they text rather than call, they often say texting is faster and more efficient. Calling; like the road less traveled, requires more effort than texting. But what if choosing to call rather than text, “made all the difference” in the way we communicate with one another?
The main reason people cite they would rather text than call someone is that texting is faster and easier than calling. Texting, on the surface, seems like it is faster than calling. Texting only requires you type a short sentence or two and send it to the recipient. Simple right? But what happens if the sentence you composed was unclear to the receiver? The receiver has to read the sender’s text, realize they don’t understand what the sender is trying to say and then compose their own text back to the sender hoping for clarification. The sender receives this text back and realizes the confusion. The sender then must compose another text, likely longer than the first one, to try to clarify what they initially intended to say. The recipient receives this clarification and must once again try to decipher it. If the recipient was hovering over their phone for the entire back-and-forth of communication, this exchange may only take a minute or so. However, if either the sender or the recipient is not constantly on alert for a new text message, the clarification to the initial message could stretch on much longer. All of this delay could have been avoided if the original sender would have just had made a 30 second phone call to the recipient to begin with. If the senders initial sentence was unclear, they could respond to the recipient’s confusion in real-time to remedy the miscommunication instead of having to pour over their phone for the newest text.
The statement that texting is faster than phone calls can further disproven by thinking about the time it takes to refocus after switching tasks. Researchers have found that it can take up to 20 minutes to completely refocus on a task after being distracted. Say you are trying to complete a task that should take you an hour to complete if you are fully focused on it. Twenty minutes into the task, you receive a call from your roommate asking if you want to get Chipotle for dinner. You love Chipotle so you obviously want to get food there but ask your roommate what time they where planning on going. You quickly reach a time that works for you and agree to meet at your house at 5:00 to go get your burritos. The call takes one minute and you then finish the rest of your task. In total the task takes you 81 minutes to complete: 60 minutes for the task, 1 minute for the phone call, and 20 minutes to refocus. Now let’s say you are trying to complete the same task and twenty minutes in your roommate texts you wondering if you want to get Chipotle for dinner. You take a few seconds to think about it but once again since you love Chipotle you respond with a resounding YES and ask what time. You start working on the task at hand again and your roommate responds 20 minutes later asking if 6:00 clock works for you. You read the text and propose 5:00 because you have to meet with someone at 6:15. You start working on your task at hand again. Your roommate again responds twenty minutes later saying 5:00 works for them and asks you if you want to meet at your house to drive over. You respond with a “yes” and tell them you will see them then you finish the rest of the task you were working on. Let’s just assume it takes 20 second to read a text and compose a new one to your roommate. For this example, you sent 3 texts which comes out to 1 minute, the same as the phone call. The total time it took you to complete the task though was 121 minutes: 60 for the task, 1 minute for the texts, and 60 minutes to refocus! Obviously this example isn’t perfect, completing a task probably doesn’t require absolute focus. However, the idea that the more distractions we have when we are trying to focus increases the time it to complete a given task remains true.
The second reason most people would rather text than call someone is that texting is easier. Texting, unlike calling, requires less initial effort. One must simply compose a text and they are able to send it off to more than one person with the simple press of a “button”. To call a group of people, on the other hand, requires you dial up each person individually to deliver the same message. Clearly, in group instances, texting is easier than calling. But like in The Road Not Taken, the easier option is not necessarily the superior option. For example, say you texted a group of your best friends saying that you will meet them at the concert. Texting for this example is faster than calling everyone, it is easier, and in this case it is appropriate. Choosing to send a text to tell your friends that you received a large and important award would be faster and easier than texting them, but it wouldn’t be appropriate. Some situations just require a phone call. A phone call gives more meaning and importance to the information you are trying to share.
Recent publications suggest that young people today are less able to distinguish situations that are inappropriate for texting. The CNN article We Never Talk Anymore: The Problem with Text Messaging by Jeffrey Kluger describes adolescents and young adults who go as far as ending relationships over text messages. Kluger cites the work of Sherry Turkle to describe the discomfort individuals avoid by breaking up or “apologizing” over text message. Turkle states that the discomfort of the situation is the point of the situation. By missing the discomfort of having to talk to someone in real time we keep ourselves from learning how to communicate effectively. She explains that even if someone is not sorry for something they did, they don’t even need to try to fake it when they apologize. They simply need to type “I’m Sorry” and hit send. Recent research has also suggested that young adults show less empathy than previous generations. A large factor attributing to this lack of empathy is the decreased amount of time young people spend communicating in real time. When we text, we don’t need to listen to vocal cues for emotions, we rely on emojis and punctuation instead. Because of this, it is difficult for us to discern what a person truly means through a text message. Like typing an apology they didn’t truly mean, a person could be thinking something completely different than what they type in a text.
Texting also gives us the ability to always edit what we are going to say. If we type a text but don’t like the way we worded it, we can always delete it and start again. On the surface, there is nothing wrong with this. Editing what we say might allow us to make the message more appealing or thoughtful. However, when we talk in real time, over the phone or in person, we don’t have this luxury. When we get used to always being able to edit what we want to relay to the person we are communicating, we may find ourselves anxious and short for words when we are no longer to think for an extended time before we respond to a question, comment, or situation in real time. Think does seeing an incoming call on your phone seem excessively nerve wracking to you? We need to be able to quickly convert our thoughts into words when we have a conversation. Learning to do so can only occur through practice in real time. Being able to think on one’s feet may be more difficult than having ample time to think before we speak, but it is still a necessary skill to learn.
There is nothing inherently wrong with texting. The fact still remains that texting in some applications is incredibly practical and a more effective mode of communication than calling. We, however, need to draw a better distinction for when we choose to call someone rather than text them. We need to think about how the choice to text rather than call can impact the way we use our time. Additionally, we need to think about the potential benefits real time conversation can bring in different situations. Can taking the road less traveled and choosing to call over text actually make all the difference? The answer is hard to determine. At the very least, it might be worth trying to answer for ourselves.
