Reach out and touch someone

Last week I asked my Facebook friends this question:  ”Do you find yourself calling people on the phone less and less?”

I walked away from the computer, and when I returned, the responses had started rolling in.

Four people simply said, “Yes.”  Others said:

• Yep, and I like it much better. I actually keep in contact more often now that there is email and FB. I have a hard time remembering to call people during normal daytime hours so this way I can still contact people.
• Absolutely. For casual comments and questions, I text. So do most of my friends. I do talk with my sons on the phone once a week, and with a dear friend in Boston every few weeks, but we see each other on FB more often than that. Mostly, I think of the phone as for businessy sorts of things or for emergencies.
• No, but I’m not sure if that is because I moved across the country. I call a lot—I think I probably spend maybe 3 hours on the phone a week? The internet adds more communication with folks than I otherwise would have, and I like that. I might also not be of the right generation to ask, because the internet came up around the time I would have had phone privileges as a kid.
• Less on the phone. I really don’t think that is a good thing. Life has become more complicated. It’s a shame, as I think our relationships have suffered because we have too much one-way communication. E-mail is efficient, but isolating.
• Yes, but when I do talk on the phone, it is usually a planned call to a family member or close friend and we talk for hours…
• Work, I use skype or google hang out quite a bit, but still phone as well. Friends and family, long distance, I use skype or google hang out. Local friends I use phone to arrange to see face to face. My 16 year old, I text.
• I pretty much avoid talking on the phone anyway, but with texting and FB it’s even easier. I prefer face to face, but find texting and FB helpful when used well.
• I find that my phone calls are more scheduled than anything else. In other days, I would just spontaneously call someone, or they’d spontaneously call me. Now, usually several texts go through asking if their busy before we call each other.
• Absolutely. Facebook is a wonderful communication tool. You can rally 10 people together to do something fun with hardly any effort. Remember trying to do that by phone?
• I very rarely get a phone call. Occasional text, emails are the way I communicate. And, I’ve been thinking, I don’t like it very much. NPR interview with Sherry Turkel, author of “Alone Together” about just this thing. A lonely existence.
• Text more than phone these days—inherited from my kids. Facebook has largely replaced e-mail for keeping in touch with friends and family. Still use e-mail and phone for business-type things, but being retired means a lot less of that too.
• Occasionally I need to give remedial phone etiquette lessons to my 13-year-old. She just doesn’t talk on the phone enough to know what to do.
• Text and Facebook are my biggest communication lines by far.
• Regrettably, honestly, yes.
• Yes. I generally avoid it.
• No, but I find myself wasting way way too much time here!!
• No, I’ve never been a phone-talker. I actually communicate more often now that technology has evolved.
• Yes, but even more, I almost never write people notes anymore. Used to put out a dozen a week.
• Some people I chat online with, some I call. It depends on the person.
• I text you since you are in a different time zone but I will say I know I light up when I see someone I know and love have called me. Text is nice because its unobtrusive. Calling lets you hear how someone really is vs what a Text or email tells you.
• What’s a “phone?”

Photo by Trace Meek.

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