I always gather some pearls of wisdom whenever I Skype with my mother in New Zealand. (Aside from just getting a sore throat from our hour-long conversations). Not that I mind, really. All I need is a glass of water and I'm set.
However, the sore throat and the whole awkwardness got me thinking about conversations, in general. I'm talking about actual face-to-face conversations. We don't seem to have too many of those anymore.
This particular conversation started with Social Media. I'm pro, mom's against, even though she has a Facebook account she never checks. We were talking about privacy settings and how I had just heard of this program that some digital strategist are using to bypass people's privacy settings on Facebook and Twitter to gain insight on their Social Media behaviors.
"Big Brother is watching," my mother said."Goes to show, you might think something's private, but anyone can look at it. You should make sure you're not posting anything crazy there."
First of all, as a grad student, I have no social life. Social Media is my social life. That said, I don't really care about people finding what I've posted on my Facebook. Sure, I have uber-privacy settings on that thing, but the main thing is that Facebook is my one outlet where I get to be who I really am and communicate with my friends about what's important to me.
"Well, you better talk to your little cousins about that stuff," she said. "I've seen drunken pictures up there and party pictures. They should know that this is probably going to keep them from getting a job some day in the future."
My cousins don't even have privacy settings on their Facebooks. One got his account hacked into. One posts too many party pics, and one posted some private information about an employer's alarm code.
"Someone needs to talk to them," my mom said. "School doesn't do it and teens don't talk to their parents. I hope their teachers at least take their phones away if they're using it in class."
I guess I never thought about that because when I was in high school we had pagers (yes, I'm that old) and they were confiscated if you were caught checking it during class. Plus, I always talked to my parents about everything. (Well, almost.)
"Teens don't talk. Period," I told my mother. At this moment I had a very strange revelation. Teens don't talk anymore because no one talks anymore. I mean, no one really uses their vocal chords to communicate anymore. It's a rare thing to even have a phone conversation with someone. Most of our communication is through email, Twitter, status updates and text messages.
Growing up in the era before text messaging, as a teen, I would spend hours on the phone with my friends. Sometimes I would even fall asleep with the phone cradled under my ear. The phone was used to schedule hang-out times and places. I was the one responsible for organizing things, so I would be on the phone all afternoon calling all my friends until we had a definite arrangement. I was kind of glad when everyone finally got AOL and we could just email or IM and conference IM what movie we were seeing at the mall and when.
Now we don't even talk anymore. If I have something to say to one of my friends I either write it on their wall, address a Tweet to them or just text them depending on the message. I had an old friend tell me a while back that she had no idea what was going on in my life because my Facebook status updates were so random and generic. (Yeah, that's kind of the point.) I got a little annoyed and started wondering why she hadn't just picked up the phone and given me a ring. Another friend sent me an IM a couple of weeks ago asking me how I was. "Nice," she messaged back as if not really paying attention to what I had written. As a response to my question, "How's it going with you?" She posted a link to her blog. (Tacky much?)
This all reminded me of that episode of "Seinfeld" where Elaine is in social agony over what is appropriate when expressing your sympathies to someone over the death of a loved one. She can't leave a message. But she knows she shouldn't call on a cell phone either because what if the reception cuts out. Besides calling someone on a cell phone means you're not giving your full attention to the conversation because you're on your cell phone probably doing something else while you're calling.
There's that common sense we all seem to be lacking these days when it comes to personal communication.
My mother and most older adults I know think that kids are born with new technology already embedded in their brain like it's part of their DNA or some nanochip that's implanted when they come out of the womb. "Pretty soon kids are going to be born without vocal chords because it won't be necessary to speak anymore."
There's a frightening thought.
On that note, I've decided to take my own personal time machine back to 1996, actually call my friends this week and have a real-life, real-time voice-to-voice conversation. (If they have Skype, that's better, I"m sure.) But I'll stick to an actual phone for now. (Hopefully AT&T allows me to do this.) Or better yet, I'll arrange to grab a drink or coffee with them and have a real face-to-face conversation. Point is, if I have something to say to the important people in my life, I'm going to actually say it to them instead of sending a message in written text.
Let's see how that goes.
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