By Barbara Baker
In a society where many of
today’s 18 year olds were literally teething on a cell phone, punching out a
message on a mini keyboard is just second nature. Studies show that most
teenagers will text an average of 60 times per day. Northeastern Junior College
Sociology Professor Jeff Schiel, who also teaches Anthropology classes, decided
to challenge his students to stop texting. He asked a Cultural Anthropology
class of 18 to voluntarily commit to use their cell phones as if they were only
an old-fashioned land line for one full week, and to live to tell about it.
The students were asked, on an
honorary and voluntary basis, to give up any use of their hand held device other
than to make a phone call where they would speak voice to voice, person to
person for one full week. They had to promise not to text, to stay away from the
games and other apps they frequent every day, including the built-in phone
calculator. Could they do it?
The social experiment was
designed to help the students see how much interpersonal communication has
changed; how face to face talk time has evolved into a thumb driven
technological whirlwind that consumes many of us day after day. Sixteen students
in the class signed up, made the pledge and started the exercise. Two flat
declined, saying that they knew they could not, and would not do it, for various
reasons. Within two days, six of the 16 had dropped out of the exercise. They’d
somehow been sucked back into their old routine, unable to withstand the
temptation. For the remaining 10, who still had two more days to go with the
experiment, some spoke of finding a new freedom while others talked of a new
anxiety because they’d lost the ability to plan what they were going to ‘say’…in
a text.
At the start of the experiment,
Schiel explained the process and then gave the students five minutes in class to
mass-text all the contacts in their phone and tell them that they were beginning
this social experiment and for the next seven days, they would only be able to
talk to them on the phone, by voice. They told their contacts that they were not
to receive or respond by text. Basically they said, “If you want to contact me
for the next week, call me and speak to me on my phone.”
During class on Monday of this
week, five days into the exercise, Schiel opened the class with discussion about
how the phone has evolved. A few older students in the class shared how as
children, they lived in homes with party lines, or in a community where their
phone number was only four digits and easy to remember. Schiel said he
remembers, to this day, the phone number he was to call to reach his mother at
work, when he was in kindergarten. One 20-year old student spoke of her
hardship as a teen because she and her siblings shared a phone. “I didn’t have
my own phone and it was bad,” she said, chuckling. Today, it is rare when a
student doesn’t have their own digital dynamo in their pocket.
Students spoke candidly about how
the “no text” rule was helped or hindered their lives. “This has impeded my
ability to socialize,” said David Cordova, a music major from Denver. “In a way
it is stopping my ability to have a relationship,” he says, laughing. “It has
impaired how I communicate, but I’ve also realized that I use it as a crutch.”
Other students chimed in and agreed it is much more difficult to have the phone
actually ringing, knowing that if and when they answer it, there is going to be
someone on the other end wanting something. “The pressure of a phone call
instead of a text forces us to act when we might not otherwise act,” said one
student.
“When you’re texting, you can
have a little time to react if you need it,” says Stephanie Taylor who chose
not to participate in the experiment. “Texting is like a letter. You can enter a
message in your phone and then choose to send it right then, or choose to wait
and send it later, you can edit it, or you can erase it altogether. You can’t do
that when someone is on the other end of the line wanting your response.”
Others in the group point out that in texting, you might also respond rapidly
and say something you would never say to someone face to face. Texting, they
agree, where what you communicate is documented, is much more liable. Taylor
admits that part of her reluctance to participate was because her boyfriend
chooses to communicate almost exclusively by text. “I can win an argument with a
text better than I can with a call,” she tells her fellow students as many of
them look at her, amazed that she thinks this. “When you’re actually talking to
a person, there’s a lack of ability to plan what I’m going to say. With texting,
I can do this.” One student shared with the group that her mother has been
ecstatic about this experiment because the two of them have had to talk in
person. “She calls me and talks and talks and talks! When we text, I can control
how much time I spend with her on the phone but right now I can’t get her to
stop!” she said, as others laughed.
Some students admitted the
spontaneity of a phone call can create panic, and it takes some mental fortitude
to realize that you don’t have to have an answer for whatever is being asked of
you right then and there. You can, after all, call someone back.
Students discussed how technology
has shaped how they communicate. Having instant and constantly changing
information at your fingertips is both good and bad. “Because of these phones,
we don’t know how to ‘filter’ what is really specifically for us and in a sense,
it makes it hard for us to choose who we are,” Cordova says, asking others if
that makes any sense to them. This dialogue moved to talk about the “hamster
wheel” effect of non-stop information clutter that keeps us all running all of
the time and there is no button available to turn it off. If you’re not getting
it on your phone, you’re getting it somewhere else.
There were students who liked
removing the pressure of the cell phone. “I felt a sense of freedom,” says
Chelsea Kappius, “I am no longer staring at my phone because I know nothing is
happening.” Another older adult student said that she has never liked texting.
“It takes me 10 texts to get what I can get out of one phone call.” Actually
talking to someone who is hearing you on the other end of the line is much more
genuine, the students decided.
“On Facebook, you might type in
to someone that their baby is really cute, when actually, you’re thinking
something else,” Schiel points out, bringing laughter from his students. The
ability to flirt and drop innuendos to the opposite sex disappears when texting
goes away. Students admit that they certainly would not say on the phone what
they are brave enough to text to someone regarding secret desires. So much for
liability. There’s that filter thing, or lack of it, again.
Some addicted Textsters in the
class talked about starting to experience the documented medical disorder of
“Phantom Vibration” which happens when you think that your phone in your pocket
is vibrating when it actually isn’t. A few students said that the exercise
really hasn’t affected them because they didn’t use their phone all that much to
start with. During the 20 minute classroom dialogue, two students, both
experiment drop outs, were actively seen texting on their phones. When asked
how many had activity happening on their phone right at that moment, one student
said, with his hand in the air and his smart phone lit up on his desk, “I’m
getting a phone call right now.” He chose not to answer it during class.
Schiel said he has a sociology
class also doing this same experiment. At the end of the week, he said he will
end the experience like he started it. “I will give them five minutes in class
to text like crazy, we’ll call it an epic text session.”
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