Can you read me now?

Why do people who are in the same room or on the phone,instead of talking to each other, text each other back and forth, presumably using a phone or a computer chat. I see it all the time and am quite guilty of this myself.

I just wonder why we do it. Are we so afraid of person to person communication that we now avoid personal interactions at all costs? Are there things we can say in text that we might not otherwise be able to express.



Sometimes its easier to say stuff without having to say it out loud. However things that are typed lose any and all human emotion. Smilies and Emoticons do not convey half of what the human face and body convey when talking face to face. Do we text simply to absolve ourselves of our bodies saying something we do not want known, possibly to hide things from the person we are texting to?

I know this will continue, I just sometimes ask myself if one day, will we find ourselves using nothing but mechanical means of communication. Will conversations with our children at dinner simply show up on a screen embedded in the dining room table? A screen which rests next to the plastic coated, spill proof built in keyboard, and is all part of the media center catering to each persons internet induced walking coma.

So while it is good that people might find it easier to text than talk and therefore express feeling or thoughts previously unable to be expressed, are we just heading towards a society that only expresses feeling with a smiley face or LOL?