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Kids and texting: Shooting arrows around corners

Posted By Scott Warnock On In technology,virtual children by Scott Warnock | 3 Comments

I don’t know how you even count such things, but one prediction states that in 2011 the world will send seven trillion [1]—nope, I have to write it out: 7,000,000,000,000—text messages. Ah, the world communicated in text. I remember when I was working as a medical/technical journalist in the 90s and my field shifted to written communications. I spent a lot of time interviewing physicians and scientists by phone. I would record these conversations and then write a transcript. But at some abrupt point, I started using this tool called email. I would type up questions and the interviewee, sometimes a  prominent person in that medical field, would peck out responses.

I liked that. I enjoy writing. I type fast. This not only improved my efficiency as a journalist, but I felt empowered by these textual dealings. The business of my life had been converted to a textual environment, where I was good.

Nowadays lots of people are fast-typing users of the written word. Texting. IM messages. Twitter. Facebook chats. We’re typing away, for work and play.

These scribes are increasingly younger, and, in addition, youngsters’ use of texts is by most measures growing [2]. Children keep in touch with their parents via ephemeral textual strands. It can be a handy, convenient, sometimes sweet way to stay linked. But the increased peer-to-peer textual interaction among kids  is often altogether different, and “sweet” is seldom the word to describe it.

Sure, it’s not just kids who are naughty. Plenty of adults are harassing (cyber) and stalking (cyber) and engaging in all kinds of other bad e-behaviors. But what kids do via e-texts often amazes me. They bash. They bully. They gang up. Even when they are not being mean, the messages are astonishingly vapid. “Heeeyyy” is a typical communication. That’s it: “Heeeyyy.” This is lower on the value scale than even small talk about the weather. Nothing productive is going on in some big chunk of that 7 trillion messages for the younger crowd.

Yeah, there have always been bullies and meanies. (One day, I’ll tell you of my dealings with a bully I’ll call Mack.) But digital tech changes the game. Lots of virtual ink has been spilt about the peculiar dynamics of electronic communications. What is it about e-messages that enables such odd behavior? For instance, why is it that kids who were getting along just fine in person at 3:00 pm can hop on the InterWeb and start insulting each other textually two hours later?

Writing has always changed the role of communicator and audience — thus leading Plato to cast a wary eye on writing long ago. But the blip of e-text disrupts the sender-receiver roles in ways that render that relationship strikingly more unequal, and some feel make it more impersonal [3], than we’ve perhaps ever been accustomed to.

Part of the problem is that the receiver role may remain static. Receiving a negative text can elicit similar responses as receiving a negative face-to-face comment. It can hurt your feelings or make you mad. It can make you worried or scared. It can give you nightmares.

But the sending role is now much different. Writing, and, often, just as importantly, delivering the e-text are completely different experiences from many other kinds of communication, certainly oral but even written. Sending e-texts is nothing — a transient experience. Send it to the stark characters of an addressee: “Warnock, Scott.” Off it goes. No stamp. No eye contact. Nothing but a few clicks.You can toss off a mean comment or a threat or any old thing.

Add the permanence of e-communications, that after a message is launched it floats in the ether to finally drift onto a server where it embeds, like, forever.

This easy-to-send/just-as-hard-to-receive/stay-around-forever environment is difficult for big people. How can kids possibly manage it? When I frame it this way, it seems obvious that most kids are not ready for this world. They have a new way to say but without  equivalent scaffolding to managing these new utterance modes. They’re kids. They have still-developing frontal lobe [4]s, which thus limits their understanding of consequences and inhibits, well, inhibition. (It’s why we don’t try them as adults for crimes.)

So that Edward Bulwer-Lytton [5] knew what he was talking about with the pen being mightier than the sword — because the worst havoc we can wreak is often that for which we are not accountable. You can see the effect of your sword, however bloody its swings. But we could always dodge the consequences of our messages, and now with digital tech tools, we can spread our communication with complete personal disconnect. Kids, still developing the real sense that there are other people out there, can spread some anger or hate, and then walk away and have a Nutter Butter [6].

Forget the sword for a moment. The use of these texts is often is like shooting an arrow blindly around a corner. For the shooter, there may not even be intent to hurt. But tell that to the kid with the arrow in her chest.

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Scott Warnock [10]

Scott Warnock is a writer and teacher who lives in South Jersey. He is a professor of English at Drexel University, where he is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Father of three and husband of one, Scott is president of a local high school education foundation and spent many years coaching youth sports.
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