Leave a Message After The Beep

Like many people from my generation I prefer to text over calling. Texting is something I do everyday, it keeps me in contact with my friends and family. As I’ve had a non-traditional job I actually communicate with my coworkers and boss through messenger, but generally “adult jobs” will use calling as the main way to communicate. I’m unfortunately going to have learn to make calls as I grow and join the workforce.

Let’s talk about the positives of texting first, quick and quiet you can send a text from almost anywhere without creating a noise disturbance. Secondly, while you can describe an image in the era of smartphones you can easily take a photo and show someone exactly what you’re seeing. People don’t tend to have the best memory, texting leaves a clear catalog of conversations. Of course there’s negative to texting, the conversations by messaging can lead to a feeling of disconnect as you aren’t able to directly speak to someone. You can’t convey emotions through a text message in the same way as when you talk, it’s up to the reader to guess the meaning and that can lead to miscommunication. Lastly you don’t know when someone will look at a text, they might be preoccupied with something else or simply miss it since text alerts tend to be less obtrusive. So texting is great for a sneaky text in a meeting or class but bad when you’re looking for an immediate response or feeling sarcastic.

The classic phone call, do the older methods work better? Let’s find out. When calling you get an immediate response, either you go to voicemail and know that person is busy or you get a hold of them and can speak in real time. While this also doesn’t let you see body language it does let you hear the tone of which someone is talking and the inflections in what they’re saying. Unlike texting there is less of a disconnect between people when you’re able to directly speak to them. Of course phone calls aren’t perfect and come with their own disadvantages. Maine isn’t known for having the best cell service which leads to the issue of call quality, just because you reach someone doesn’t mean you can hear them, even if it seems to be good quality calls can drop whereas a text simply will or will not send. If you’re a decent person you won’t be able to take a call while in most public places, a call is noisy and most will find it rude to take a call in a place like a store. In addition to all of that most people find that making phone calls makes them anxious. So calling is good for quick responses with classification but not something you are always able to do.

“A sign of the times: cellphones and brightly-colored shoes” by Ed Yourdon is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.