Relationships can be funny things. They can be wonderful, they can be horrible or they can be both. That’s when it starts to get confusing.
In relationships of my own, lines can get crossed, especially when technology is involved.
In this day and age, a relationship is more than a phone call or a simple hello. It’s a tweet, a Facebook status, a picture or a text message. The trick is to master what to say and when to say it — on every form of media source there is.
A relationship used to involve a letter or a phone call. Now it involves a text message every five minutes, an email, AIM or a Facebook chat box.
Communication has become a way to stay constantly connected, often to the point of obsession.
According to marketingcharts.com, texting has become such a prominent part of teens’ lives that 47 percent of them can text with their eyes closed.
Though I haven’t quite reached that level of technological talent or dependency, I have noticed the effect it has on my own life.
Instead of dealing with people and problems face to face, I send an email or a text. While out with friends I send business emails, text my editors, check Facebook, play different games and continue reading the New York Times article I started in between phone calls with my mom.
All of these experiences do help me stay connected with the world around me. It creates a quantity of relationships, but the quality remains questionable.
Though I can text my boyfriend or my mom whenever I want — words can be misunderstood and brief. Details shared in person or on the phone are forgotten through a cryptic text or an email.
Has connection become more important than communication?
For the past week, I challenged myself to put down my phone and shut my laptop when conversing with those important to me. It lasted all of 40 minutes at my Valentine’s Day dinner until I had the compulsion to check my email.
How romantic — a valentine, lasagna and Lindsay’s smart phone. I’m not surprised that my boyfriend wasn’t too happy.
Some argue that it is a sign of our times: They need Facebook to have friends, need their iPhone to keep up with their work, have to text their editor back before the story goes out. But, these are not necessities. Somehow people functioned, worked and socialized without a MacBook or a smart phone.
Somehow people had best friends, dated and visited with families without Skype or email.
It is true that technology is taking over the world. It just depends whether or not you’re willing to let it take over yours.
What’s more important — texting with your eyes closed, living with them glued to your computer screen or living with your eyes open, glued to the world surrounding you?
Lindsay Friedman is a freshman studying journalism and a columnist for
The Post. Email her at lf328610@ohiou.edu.
