Imagine that you see someone at school and you talk with them every day. You start to follow them on social media and begin to exchange texts. Romantically, you become interested. Suddenly though, they take three days to respond to texts, or worse, leave them unanswered. You feel confused, and frankly, a little disrespected. This generation knows this feeling all too well.
Texting culture has negatively influenced how we interact and develop social relationships with our peers. While it is a heavily preferred mode of communication, the downfall of texting is the lack of tone and body language, which makes it difficult to communicate and understand the other person effectively. Our behaviors when communicating through text can be ambiguous and frustrating to the receiver.
This is where the concept of “ghosting” comes in. The most common explanation of “ghosting” is when the receiver of a text message purposefully does not respond to a text, similar to acting like a ghost and disappearing from the conversation.
Junior Niki Hamedani shares her opinion on this widespread cultural phenomenon.
“[Ghosting] is kind of an outlet for people to avoid responsibility and to avoid any conflict with improving,” Hamedani said.
According to the Thriving Center of Psychology, 78% of Generation Z reported “ghosting” someone else, and three in four of them believed that this was valid in certain situations. One of these situations included “reciprocal ghosting,” where an individual “ghosts” in return after being previously “ghosted” by another person.
This means that others easily pick up on these lapses in miscommunication, which is why they happen so often. The continued influence and the cyclical adoption of these behaviors perpetuate the toxicity of texting culture.
“Texting gives you that power just to cut off any person…it does kind of ruin the humanity of the interaction,” sophomore Madrid Dale said.
It is uncommon for people to turn away and ignore each other in an in-person conversation. But “ghosting” through text is equivalent to someone physically ignoring you.
Due to the lack of physical connection between you and the receiver, ignoring that text after a bad date instead of explaining why you did not like it seems a little too easy. And for many, this is second nature.
The same holds for every type of relationship, romantic or not. With the amount of friendships formed online or through social media, it is no surprise that “ghosting” is extremely prevalent here as well.
“I’ve been ghosted so many times…I’ll have this regular conversation with someone [on text] and then I’ll send them a video or something like that…and then I won’t even have a conversation with them again, even in real life,” sophomore Trinity Stenson said.
“Ghosting” has taught our generation to normalize this inconsiderate behavior and prevent us from forming genuine relationships with others.
On the other hand, a definite benefit of texting is that there is no urgent need to respond. People can respond at their leisure, something that can’t be done with a phone call, where one needs to be present throughout the call and has to devote one’s entire attention to it.
Although many people text with the intention of a leisurely chat, this convenience has gone to the point of being grossly overdone. The act of texting itself is generally made for casual conversations or a quick message to send to the other recipient, not for sensitive conversations that should be done face-to-face.
Due to the assumed casual connotation of these texts, sincerity often gets lost through the shallowness of hasty one-word responses and deceptive messages.
“With texting, it’s easier to have a lot less meaning in your words. Like if you’re talking about something very sentimental, or having a serious conversation, it’s so easy to not mean something and just lie,” Stenson said.
So the next time you are asking your friend to hang out on the weekend or somebody out on a date, opt for calling instead of texting. At least with this, you can converse with the other person in real time and be your true authentic self.
In our generation of technology and digitized interactions, we should be prioritizing what is the most real: the basic need for human connection.
