CIG: Denver Public Relations, training, graphic design, research and proposal writing

Mama’s Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Texters…

This cartoon appeared in the editorial section of the Denver Post on August 8, 2009. What a coincidence for me as, just the night before, I had been having a lengthy conversation about how the next generation seems to me to lack the fundamental social skills that come with actual spoken conversation and not through texts, Facebook or Twitter.

I came to this conclusion after watching my niece and her friend who are both 16. They came in and were extremely uncomfortable around the adults in the room. My niece never introduced her friend, nor did her friend take it upon herself to let us know who she was. This is by no means the first interaction I have had like this between my niece and her friends. It sparked a conversation with the adults in the room.

I was curious. When had it become okay to not interact with adults? I remember being the same age (and no, I’m not that old…!) and sitting in my friends’ kitchens talking with their parents and interacting with the entire family. Now my niece sits in the back room, around a computer, looking at her MySpace page with her friends. When she actually is in the same room, she isn’t comfortable enough to even introduce them. We decided as a group that it must be due in large part to text messaging, Facebooking, Twittering, etc. that our youth has lost the basic skills of normal everyday conversation and interaction.

What a scary thought, especially because I can see my own young children going down the same path. My five-year-old daughter hasn’t learned to read yet, but she can navigate her way around my iPhone and computer to play games whenever she wants; so how fitting when I open the paper and see this cartoon.

It depicts life perfectly – we have lost the art of conversation. What a sad, sad realization. While I’m all for using technology to further communication, I have to say – when texting becomes simpler and more comfortable than using real words, we’re in trouble.

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