Air Texting

 

It’s like texting in the air without having your phone…you mimic real texting…STOP DOING THAT.  RIGHT NOW.   Unless you want to be mistaken for someone who should be rocking back and forth on the psych ward you need to stop.   It looks ridiculous.

It scares me that just the mention of the word text causes people to do this.  Have we lost all sense of being among the living that we are struck by some Pavlovian trigger to move our fingers when we talk about what we said to someone via text message?

There is actually a Facebook page; they call themselves a community, Air Texting Rocks:

air texting

This community is screaming teenage angst.  So far they’ve got 15 Likes, been up since 2010 and hopefully have outgrown being grounded from their phones over the last 4 years.  Who knows?

I get this silliness from teenagers.  I don’t get the trigger response from adults.  I know you think I’m sounding anti-technology but I am actually a fan of technology when it enhances my life.  I was one of the first people shopping on line, paying bills on line, I had, and still have (no snappy remarks) one of the first Tivos.  I love my laptop and even more my IPad.  But when it comes to the phone I know it’s just another piece of equipment.  I use it to make my life easier but it doesn’t define my world.  I feel lucky to have been on the cusp of new technology while still young enough to appreciate it and make it part of my language but old enough to understand that human interaction is key to a long and healthy life.

While waiting to be seating in a restaurant the other night I watched a couple stand side by side each on their own phone.  There was no conversation.  There was literally no interaction.  They had the look of a couple out without the kids, or out after a hard day, or even if it was just out for a quick bite they didn’t speak to each other.  What could be so enthralling on their phones that they didn’t feel the need to speak.  When I’m with my people, I’m with my people.  No phones allowed.  I want to hear what you have to say, I’m interested in you.  If you aren’t interested enough in me to put your phone away for a couple of hours you’re not my people.

with my people

If you can’t speak without air texting you have a problem.  Your technology has become something other than a tool.  It has gotten under your skin and into your brain.  What if technology fails?  Are you self-reliant enough to withstand down time?

Tom Chatfield from the BBC:

If it’s disconcerting that checking my smartphone has become a habit, there’s a particular irony for me: for the last few months, I’ve been involved in a project to design a “code of conduct” for smartphone usage on Australia’s Sunshine Coast. The code comes in seven parts, and aims to help holiday makers stop their smartphones taking over time they’ve set aside for leisure, each other and the place they’re in. Behind it, though, lies something that applies to us all: the need for new etiquettes in an era where shared notions of acceptable behavior lag years, if not decades, behind the tools we’ve incorporated into our lives.

My phone code of conduct? If you call my cell phone after 9 it will go to voice mail.  If you call and I don’t call you back, get over it.  I’ve taken to checking my messages at certain times of the day, I’m not a doctor it’s never an emergency.  Unless, of course, you’re my Mother in which case everything is the end of the world.  If I’m out with friends, not gonna get me because if I’m with you I’m with you.

Most of all, STOP AIR TEXTING, you’re acting like the phone is a phantom limb and it demeans you on so many levels.  You are a person of high intelligence that can certainly have a conversation without it. Surely you must know what to do with your hands while speaking. If you don’t then learn, quickly, before the temptation to rock back and forth sets in next.