A Thought for Tuesday #24 We text really fast, but are we losing the ability, and the will, to have real conversations!

Yes, I admit it, I hold the phone in one hand, and type out messages with the index finger of the other hand - much to the amusement and obvious eye-rolling of my young people! They who do the lightning speed two-thumbed thing with an extraordinary level of dexterity.

A recent Swiss study found that two thumbed whizz kids, raised with a device in their hands,  can reach typing speeds of 38wpm, which is only 25% slower than the average on a full size qwerty keyboard – a system specifically designed for speed. One of the volunteers in the study reached an eye watering 85wpm with two thumbs.

But here’s the rub. The average daily time spent on a device by those who reach those speeds is six hours. Six hours! How on earth do you cook, exercise, sleep, write, read, think, and all the other things you should be doing with your day if you take out six hours for messaging?

That said, I just had a quick look at my own screen time for today and it is 3 hours and 20 minutes, which is a lot more than I would like. But I am greatly relieved to note that half of that is ‘productivity’, and not whiling my life away on social media! I am making the odd appointment, and replying to an email or two.

But I suppose I am questioning the way screen time is changing the way we use our time and interact as human beings, in ways we haven’t even begun to fully understand.

Walking the beach recently with a friend and her dog, she told me she had made a big decision to turn off all social media at the weekends, in order to re-find the time to do ordinary, pleasurable things - like walking the dog. “If I hadn’t switched off”, she said, “I wouldn’t have called you and arranged to meet this morning”.

I knew exactly what she meant. Sometimes you can spent the first few hours of a free day scrolling and watching other lives; thinking about all the things you could do, and should do, but not actually doing any of them.

How many activities are we foregoing because of that time now devoted to a screen, connecting virtually with our friends and family instead of connecting in reality?  Ordinary  pleasurable things like chatting on the phone, catching up over a coffee, popping around to a neighbour, or calling to see your Mum? Instead the day is gone, and not a child in the house washed, because of that addictive, insidious device.

But back to the study, the Zurich scientists found that the people who are the slowest at messaging are the generation who remember when mobile phones were only good for phone calls. No real surprise there. 

In fact we are so slow we often lose patience, call the person instead, and have a good old fashioned conversation, something we are actually quite talented at. We got lots of practice at a young age in lengthy telephone conversations with our friends, usually sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, when telephones were kept in the hallway.

The super speedy message senders don’t have the same comfort on the phone  at all, and often seem reluctant to use it. I asked an intern to call a client to get an update, headed out for a meeting, returned and asked how it went, to be told he hadn’t heard back yet! It was somehow safer and less challenging pinging off an email, rather than picking up the phone. 

And that’s fine. It wasn’t life or death on that particular occasion. But it struck me that someone who is reluctant to talk to a client may also be afraid to ask for feedback, or to speak up when the project is going in the wrong direction, or to argue a case because they are not used to verbal communication, with its heat and heartbeat, and not comfortable with challenge.

We may be heading towards a world full of messagers and watchers, rather than talkers and participators, and it doesn’t seem good.

Is it true they even dump their partners by text? Or is that just an urban myth? Answers on a postcard :)

Regards, Orlaith

Thanks so much for reading! I am a Leadership Coach and Consultant and I'd be delighted to hear if I can support you or your business in any way. Connect with me here on Linkedin or Twitter and you can find my book Perform As A Leader here https://www.amazon.com/Perform-As-Leader-skills-strategies/dp/0993289207

Thanks so much for reading! I am a Leadership Coach and Consultant and I'd be delighted to hear if I can support you or your business in any way. Connect with me here on Linkedin or Twitter and you can find my book Perform As A Leader here https://www.amazon.com/Perform-As-Leader-skills-strategies/dp/0993289207