texting isn’t the first new technology thought to impair social skills

8/18/2019 Texting Isn’t the First New Technology Thought to Impair Social Skills

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Texting Isn’t the First New Technology Thought to ImpairSocial Skills

When Alexander Graham Bell introduced the telephone, skeptics worried about how it might affect

people’s interactions

Is text-messaging driving us apart? These days, we talk to each other a lot with our thumbs—

mashing out over six billion text messages a day in the United States, and likely a ew billion more

on services like !hats"pp and #acebook $essenger%

&ut some worry that so much messaging leads, paradoxically, to less communication% !hen Sherry

Turkle, the $IT clinical psychologist and author, interviewed college students, they said texting

was causing riction in their ace-to-ace interactions% !hile hanging out with riends they'd be

texting surreptitiously at the same time, pretending to maintain eye contact but mentally somewhere

else% The new orm o communication was un, sure, but it was colliding with—and eroding—theold one%

()ur texts are ine,* as one student said% (It's what texting does to our conversations when we are

together that's the problem%*

+lenty o people agree% enna &irch, a young ournalist, recently argued that texting is inerior to

talking ace to ace because it's too easy to misinterpret—over-overinterpret—tone% !orse, texting

makes it more likely or her generation to dodge diicult emotional conversations, the (hard stu%*

I we don't shape up, she warned, (we'll all end up on interconnected islands, together in our

aloneness%*

#ew technologies oten unsettle the way we relate to one another, o course% &ut social ruptures

caused by texting have a strong echo in the arguments we had a hundred years ago% That's when a

newangled appliance gave us a strange new way to contact one another en masse. the telephone%

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!hen "lexander 0raham &ell introduced his telephone in $arch 1234, the invention was riddled

with problems% The line was a crackly mess—prone to intererence rom nearby electrical lines—

and it was powered by a battery that leaked acid% Still, it allowed or a remarkable, unmooring

experience. #or the irst time, you could talk in real time to someone blocks or miles away% (It was

like a voice rom another world,* marveled one early user% &ell 5uickly improved the 5uality, and

customers thronged% In the irst year, over 6,777 telephones sold8 by 1977 there were over one

million phones nationwide%

"t irst, the telephone was marketed mainly as a tool or business% +hysicians and drugstores bought

them to process orders, and business owners installed them at home so they could be 5uickly

reached% The phone, proclaimed early ad copy, gave business leaders an :S+-like (sixth sense* o

their ar-lung operations%

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The idea o using such a powerul tool or everyday conversation? That seemed laughable and

obnoxious% )ne early social critic warned that the phone should not be used or the (exchange o

twaddle between oolish women%* &usinessmen prohibited their wives rom tying up the line, lest

they interere with commerce% ("t the beginning, women were orbidden to use the phone—the

business was supposed to have the priority,* notes $ich;le $artin, a proessor emeritus at ed there was more money in selling lines or banter than or

business% (They reali>ed, @!e can make money o gossip and idle conversation and sociability on

the telephone,'* says ing how they could reduce isolation and bringriends together% "


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men more active or more la>y?* wondered the nights o ine article in ElectricalWorld noted% Scamsters loved the phone%

(It changed people's ideas o social trust,* notes


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texting isn’t the first new technology thought to impair social skills

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