The Feb 9, 2015 New Yorker Magazine contains an inspiring piece, “R U There?” by Alice Gregory describing the work of the Crisis Text Line (crisistextline.org). Nancy Lublin (CEO) and Stephanie Shih have teamed up to create a crisis hotline targeted toward teenagers that uses only text messages to communicate. The rationale is that this is a more natural, effective and non-threatening approach for communicating with teens.
The rationale behind this innovative approach is that texting is in a teen’s DNA (almost) and is usually their main method of communication with peers --- landlines and phone calls are so 1990s. As Gregory points out, “Communications by text message is halting and asynchronous [not synchronized], which can be frustrating when you’re waiting for a reply but liberating when you don’t want to respond. If you’re a parent,you know that, even if your son does not text you back about where he is, he has read your message. If you are a distressed teen or a counsellor, you know that what you say will be read.”
Investigations performed at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research back this up: “People are more likely to disclose sensitive information via text messages than in phone conversations.” Apparently the privacy afforded by texting overrides the fear that a record of the conversation is somewhere in cyberspace. Texting can also hide emotions (tears) and seems to move the conversation straight to the point much faster than voice. It also allows clients the ultimate privacy: not only do others in proximity not hear them --- they do not hear their own voice making embarrassing revelations. This facilitates a more open conversation and hopefully, a more effective prescription from the counsellor.
At a personal level, I remember when, back in the nineties, we were running our Computer Science program using a large centralized computer which was accessed by the students via remote terminals (sort of like your PC or Mac but not as smart) whose screens were capable of displaying only alphanumeric characters (the digits 0-9, the upper and lower case alphabetic characters and a few special punctuational characters like: ,./?() etc.). One cluster of these terminals was in a small room just outside the faculty offices so we could help students who were stuck on a programming assignment. One day I noticed the room was empty except for two students sitting next to each other typing away and occasionally giggling. I surreptitiously looked over at their screens and saw they were texting one another using the system chat software. My first reaction was to look away as a courtesy to their privacy but not before it registered that they were indeed chatting at a very superficial level --- much as we all do when making idle conversation ( Whassup? Not much. ...)
My subsequent reaction was, ‘Oh, no --- we’re doomed!” If the next generation prefers to communicate through a heavily mediated technology when they are sitting right next to each other and could use a perfectly good old-fashioned method like talking face-to-face, then civilization as we know it must be on the downward road (paved with good intentions) to Chaos.
But as time has passed, my judgement has softened. Texting allows the user more control over the conversation; you don’t have to respond immediately to a text, you can take a few minutes to mull over your response. A text message is less annoying to receive than a phone call and it’s more private --- especially when you’re in a public place.
An ironic development allows newer smartphones to provide an option where you can speak your message and it gets converted to text which you then can send as a text message. So we seem to have gone full circle: I speak into my phone which converts it to text and then sends it. I’m still waiting for the technology that allows me to send messages using brain waves.
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