Stuck in the Middle With You

There is a long-standing social custom in France (and other places around the world) to acknowledge the Other—to say bonjour or au revoir when entering a conversation, heading into in a store, or otherwise initiating or ending a social encounter. Many cultures developed these salutations as ritualized forms of notification meant to communicate the intention not to harm. These seemingly banal rituals contained a certain kind of ethical acknowledgment of the Other and our mutual vulnerabilities to each other's presences.

In the communicative lifewords of those connected by digital media—and who escapes these lifeworlds today—ethical norms for behavior are developing day-by-day. These norms and their implied ethical obligations are being determined by the users of the technology and are often different from domain to domain; the Iack of consensus about what constitutes these ethical norms for behavior has been extensively documented. There are few, if any, positive, "universal" norms for online behavior.

Caution: old guy rant coming. And a confession: I still compose most emails as if they are formal letters, including dates, opening and closing salutations and space for a written signature that never arrives (or, rather, always arrives in the form of a digital signature or some other kind of digital footprint).

But since the widespread adoption of email, text and instant messaging (of various ilk) in the late 1990s and 2000s as primarily forms of communication—especially among adolescents—courtesies such as “hello,” “goodbye,” and notification to the other that you are beginning or have ended your stream of communication have all but disappeared. Children, teens and young adults have learned to both start and stay in the middle.

Interruptions of conversation are barely noticed. Teens and young adults can begin a connection, conversation or request whenever they want because that's how it is online. You don't have to generally “log-on” to the Internet. It's always on, 24/7/365. You just join the Heraclitian river, and it doesn't really matter whether it is the same river. It's always the same, in a certain profound way, in it's exceeding differentness. But there are few formalities about joining that stream. You just begin. And you can leave it anytime you like. Or rather, because it is always already there (on our phones, tablets, watches, laptops, etc.) you can “sort of” leave the conversation, and join it down the road (figuratively and literally).

Not that long ago, if many of us began a conversation and had to pause or leave the conversation, we would mark that moment with each other—by apology, explanation or salutation. It mattered—as a matter of ethical obligation to the Other—to let them know that we had to leave, and would return, i.e., au revoir. A phone call, a letter, a personal conversation began with a hello and ended with a goodbye or with the provision of some kind of explanation of the timing and form of the conversation because we wanted others to know that in some important way they were safe, that they were not being disregarded, abandoned or taken for granted.

I noticed it first with my own child—that he felt free to stop a text or phone “conversation” at any time, without informing me that he was now done or had “paused” the conversation—to be taken up or not, at a later date and time. He's a sweet person and he wasn't doing this "on purpose;" it was reflective of his digitally-based training.

In the mid-1990s, emails from my university students often failed to address me by name and just launched straight into some form of a request. As we approached the late 1990s, I witnessed the wholesale disappearance of both greetings and closing salutations. By the mid-2000s, it was beginning to get more difficult to tell whether a “formal” communication existed in the minds of many young people.

I was (naively) shocked to hear requests for my time, for employment help and a variety of other major requests without benefit of these now old-fashioned conventions. Text messages and conversations (as well as emails) sent to younger colleagues often stopped in mid-stream, went unanswered for long periods of time (if answered at all). Optionality has become the name of the game in digital communication. It's my choice—just like all the other things I can click and swipe in my digital world—whether to acknowledge you or tell you that I'm starting with or done with you. If I don't like what you say, I can just stop responding or stop mid-text, “unfriend” you, delete you or move on. A 2014 survey indicated that well over fifty-six percent of respondents felt it was acceptable and/or had already ended a romantic relationship by text message in the previous year.

Clients with whom I discuss their internet dating habits routinely report that they will stop messaging, texting and emailing people with whom they've already formed relationships. They tell me they've been on both ends of the stick—having gone into radio silence without explanation and had it done to them. To a person, these men and women say it feels really bad to just have this abrupt cessation to digital conversations, but they have done it to others fairly regularly as well. When someone is being rude, abusive, mean or just plain boring, they welcome the ability to quickly stop the relating. But they have a harder time explaining why they often do this kind of abrupt relating with those they've felt good and positive.

In the digital world, we are still trying to figure out how to be with each other and what our obligations are to those we meet only virtually. We know from a significant body of research that adolescents (and adults alike) take more sexual, financial and other interpersonal risks and engage in more corrosive behavior, more easily, when they are acting and making choices online. It seems archaic now to think to ask if we can interrupt someone to begin a conversation, or to inform that they we cannot continue the flow of a text or instant message. We expect to be able to text now, and in 5 minutes after we go get a drink, and then 12 minutes after we drive somewhere. We expect to have multiple conversations with multiple people, at the same time, over dinner, at a funeral or in the movie theatre—if you still even “go out” to see a film. Young people might argue that this extended time period of discontinuous communication is better or freeing in important ways.

But I believe, as the media critic John Culkin was known to say, that “...whomever discovered water, you can be certain it wasn't a fish.” And in the waters of digital media, many of those younger than me are native to these waters. I believe it is difficult for them—as I know it is difficult for me—to remain open to the ways in which digital media negatively interrupt and distort forms of communication that require empathy and the wisdom that is kindness. I routinely have my expectations and wishes disappointed, as I encounter "really smart" kids who struggle mightily (every day) to put together an answer or a question that has a coherent beginning, middle and end. And many of them don't mind and think it doesn't matter. Their communicative style is described by the hyperlink; having a mash-up of information seems fine, and a traditional narrative involving beginning, middle and end seems quaint.

Aristotle referred to humans as “the storytelling animal.” I believe this is deeply true. Perhaps that's why the discontinuity endemic to digital forms of communication are somehow Greek to me. Postmodernity is alright with me. But sometimes I suppose I long for the (now wickedly ironic) beginning, middle and end, even if we are to begin again, endlessly, to tell the same, new story with each other.