Bedsider

Lost In Translation: A Call Is Worth A Thousand Texts

Originally published on SexReally.com on April 29, 2010.

“Where’s my water bottle?” read the note on the screen. I was sitting at a rest stop on the road to Washington, DC, when my phone vibrated urgently and flashed the above text message from my roommate/boyfriend. I looked at my feet. His Nalgene was sitting on the floor of the car, approximately 500 miles from our apartment. Whoops. “I took it with me, my bad!” I texted back. A few back-and-forths later, he sent a response that I considered somewhat condescending: “Next time, ask me before you take my things.”

I read his message and completely flipped. Instead of “reply”, I hit “dial” and when he answered I snapped, “I apologized, what else do you want?!” He was taken aback by my irritation; I was fuming over his pedantic response to my apology. Things quickly devolved and our tiff lasted nearly half an hour before we realized we were bickering over a missing Nalgene.

Maybe it was car-ride fatigue, or the sticky hot weather, or the disgusting rest-stop smell of McDonald’s mingled with gasoline that made me react so angrily, but more likely, we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble had we just talked instead of texted. Though my relationship probably wasn’t in danger because of a text message squabble, how many romances-in-development have been derailed due to digital miscommunication? And when it comes to new or potential romantic partners, why are people so afraid of face-to-face communication?

Lehigh senior Jessica Chu says that using text and instant messages during the nascent stages of a relationship is particularly problematic. While texting and instant messaging (IMing) have become prevalent forms of communication, relying on written texts alone might not get across the nuances of your message, especially if you’re interacting with someone who isn’t familiar with your personality and tone. In one study of college students, researchers wanted to investigate whether sarcasm could be accurately detected in written statements. When given a series of sarcastic and serious statements to convey via email, the senders assumed that they would be understood 78 percent of the time. In reality, the recipients accurately identified sarcasm 73 percent of the time in voicemails and only 56 percent of the time through email, with the latter rate being equivalent to a pure guess. According to one of the researchers, “E-mail is fine if you want to communicate content, but not any emotional material.”

But what about that winky face you can append to the end of a text? Doesn’t that add some subtlety to your statements? Perhaps, but they’re still not nearly as useful as social cues, such as tone of voice and facial expressions, which could drastically alter the meaning of a statement. A researcher on another study, this one by Harvard University, says that “computer-mediated communication” is a poor substitute for face-to-face interactions. The lack of “relationship features” and physical cues prevents people from “identify[ing] correctly the kind of interpersonal situations they find themselves in”.

If the prevalence of digital conversations were just a matter of convenience, that’d be one thing. But part of the reason why people find the medium so attractive is precisely because it’s not as personal as a phone call. One informal poll by AOL and the Associated Press found that 43 percent of teenagers use instant message to deal with potentially awkward situations, including making and breaking dates – and in some cases, even relationships. While hiding behind a phone or computer screen is a nice shield, the least that we owe our romantic partners (potential and otherwise) is the decency of a real conversation, and not one that has a character limit.

Nowadays, I’m saving heated conversations – with both strangers and close friends – for later instead of responding quickly with a digital note that may or may not convey what I want to say. Jessica feels similarly and is “trying to cut the BS and stupid pointless unclear texts”. Not only does she find calling more “direct”, but she also think it saves people emotional hassle. She says, “I don’t want to waste my time figuring out what you mean and I want to save your time too.”

*****

Lena Chen is a blogger, writer and speaker on sex, gender and feminism. As a Harvard undergrad, she authored the blog Sex and the Ivy and her writing has been featured in The New York Times and Newsweek. She currently blogs at The Chicktionary.