How Do You Communicate With People? September 10, 2008
It occurred to me the other day that I don’t like talking on the phone much, I greatly prefer to text, email, IM or twitter someone. Don’t get me wrong, I still do call people regularly when it is needed, but you will no longer find me calling friends and acquaintances without a specific reason or spending copious amounts of time on the phone in a single conversation.
This struck me as somewhat odd, as when I was younger, I was on the phone constantly. So much so, that when I was a teenager, my Mom actually gave me my own personal phoneline for my 13th birthday so that other people in the house could actually make a call when I was at home. I would spend hours on end having random unfocused conversations.
This made me wonder, at what point in my life did my preferred method of communication shift from that of the traditional telephone to these newer methods of reaching out and touching someone. The very first time I made an email account was in 2001, when I went back to University and they required us to have one for an online marketing class that I took. And I never used MSN until I’d graduated University in 2006, when my job required it.
At first, I found IM to be very annoying and distracting from work and really only used email when I needed to send a file over to a classmate. Today, at any given time I’ve got a dozen IM tabs open, am twittering regularly, and am constantly sending emails. Quite often now, my phone will ring and I’ll think why is someone calling me?
So I can narrow down the scope of this communications shift to the past 2 years, but why? Is it because of what I do for a living and it’s just a natural communications progression, as you’re far more likely to find me infront of a computer than not? I can’t really answer this question, but it’s got me thinking anyhow.
Has this happened to you? Do you still chat on the phone regularly with friends and family or do you pick up the phone to call a store instead of heading over to their website to see if you can’t source the information your searching for yourself? Or is this just me?
I love calling friends on the phone, but most of my friends find that annoying. I don’t call stores, I walk to them. I feel better that way
Not just you. I actually get very annoyed with phone calls, especially at work. Email is so much easier. IM still annoys me, though. People expect a response to quickly!
[...] Original Jenn [...]