Smartphones Make Us Lazier & Less Social

Thanks, Steve Jobs, for making the iPhone, and promptly turning its fruit loving users into socially inept, lazy communicators. Well, that's not entirely fair, since Jobs never encouraged people to use iPhones to the exclusion of all other modes of communication. Of course, it's always easier to blame a cyber magician, than the high tech gadget itself. Same goes for the Droid phone, and all the rest, in helping to turn once talkative, friendly types, into cramp fingered mutes, who think a one or two sentence text message replaces a phone call, or even a short email.

There was a talky time, not too long ago, when calling a friend wasn't some weird once in a life time event, but a daily or weekly occurrence. Hearing their voice wasn't shocking nor alarming. These days people nearly freak out when you call them; is everything alright? Why are you using something so real time and intimately personal as your own voice? Why not just shoot me off an impersonal, hard to decipher string of text, symbols and numbers?

Mind you, that's not to mention the freak out if you don't respond to their text messages. On the off chance you don't get them, or if they're briefly delayed, certain testy, texting types will shoot you back one or more, to query why you aren't responding to the techy texts. We've all heard of the sad cases of violence or even murder erupting over misunderstandings through smart phone texting, or Facebook or Twitter brawls. Twitter especially is merely texting on steroids. It's even worse at dumbing down the conversation between people, but that's for another article, I suppose.

I hear this same complaint from a lot of people, but of course maybe they or I just need to seek out new friends with the same, old school philosophy. Texting is perfectly fine. I do it when needed. However, when it starts to replace ALL forms of communication between people, there should be a careful look at why it is being resorted to all the time.

Yes, texting has its place. It's quite a useful tool. Though I can't help but compare it to where it comes from in the first place - the telephone - or now the smartphone. Because just as only using the telephone for all interaction strangles intimacy from relationships, texting threatens to do the same - only much worse.