Are E-mail and Text Messaging Eroding Our Youth's Face to Face Communication Skills?

I remember it like yesterday. I stood gawkish and gasping before a room of glaring, sinister, disinterested eyes, shuffling through a stack of hastily scribbled notes, my throat burning, my mouth parched and dry. It's easy to be comfortable when one is in the audience, after all, but it is an entirely different experience when one stands at the helm. Seizing the podium is a different realm altogether, an often forlorn, unsettling realm, to say the least.

I croaked my way through my assigned subject, "the importance of athletics in school curriculum", and slithered back to my seat, soaked in sweat, hands a tremble. I later got a "C", which was somewhat of a relief as it went. My teacher's primary critique of my efforts? I needed to portray an air of confidence with my appearance and body language, and project my voice using confident, precisely tuned vocabulary. That was in 6th grade.

I can truly claim I've improved over the years. I manage an electronics repair department in an appliance store today, and give product knowledge meetings at least once a week. I stand tall, seize the podium with two firm, confident hands, and speak loudly and clearly, at least for the greater part of it. Quite a turnabout. But meetings are often held remotely these days. Online e-mail training abounds in most businesses. The critical question is, are excessive text messaging and e-mails eroding our youth's ability to speak publicly, or even speak effectively at the casual, peer to peer level? It is my observation that this may be so.

The inherent appeal of texting and e-mailing is in its very detachment. The digital realm is one of safe distance, devoid of that irksome, flesh and blood dimension, complete with glaring bloodshot eyes, fanged yellow teeth and steely tensor cheek muscles. Indeed, that is the crux of texting and e-mails popularity. It is far, far easier to express oneself over WiFi or CAT5 cable than face to face. But what happens when one is forced into face to face communication, or even merely steered into a simple conversation over the telephone? My observation is that many young people stagger and reel when faced with physical confrontation to the point of muteness at this level. A total freeze up. Could texting and e-mailing be the direct cause of this?

One can easily liken this disuse of verbal speech and confrontational skills as a form of neurological atrophy. Just as the legs of a paralysis victim weaken and wither, thus do the verbal and presentational skills of those who neglect to exercise them.

So, what's the fix?

It would probably be wise and prudent to include additional speech classes into junior high and high school curriculum to ensure that a preponderance of silent, digital banter does not supplant or stunt face to face communication skills Teachers need to be aware that excessive reliance on texting and e-mails has a deleterious effect on verbal and social skills, and should be monitored on a student by student basis to ensure that all who graduate are capable of functioning in today's multi-media world, both via keypad and the spoken word. After all, as cozy as it is,.one cannot remain in the digital cradle forever.