Dr. Nancy was interviewed by USA Today in April 2019 on this topic.
Would you believe that there are some positive benefits to texting at home? Sometimes the most complex and the simplest things are suitable for texting. For example, if you want to approach a difficult topic but want to give the person some lead time to think about it, you could text them in advance, stating what you want to discuss and asking them to get back to you with a time to talk. Or you might just be saying that dinner is ready, or asking if you left an item in another part of the house. It can be practical to send short simple texts to address any of these topics. But if you are texting rather than talking as if the person is not in the house, then you are risking becoming distant and misunderstood. The same level of connection cannot be maintained electronically that you can have in person, and the message can too easily be misinterpreted. For these types of communications, it is important that you do exist separate from your device and that certain things don’t require electronic devices. Texting too often implies that the sender assumes that you are constantly with one of your devices. And that assumption alone can be dangerous for your social connection to real people in real time.
I explained to USA Today that “What has happened in our society is we don’t exist separate from our devices anymore because we’ve learned to do so many things dependently on our device.” “One of the things that’s happening with technology, which is very unfortunate, is people are responding with brevity as opposed to really talking something through. Social interaction is not learned. Reading of body language is not learned and social skill in navigating a conversation is not learned.”
Yet sometimes difficult topics can be “discussed” through electronic media that might be too difficult to approach face to face. For example, if a child wants to talk about some negative grade or trouble they got into at school, they may want to give the parent advance notice. It can be short, but can give the parent the time to gather their thoughts so they don’t react in anger or impulsively before trying to understand the situation. Couples sometimes use the same method to initiate a topic that needs to be addressed later in person. So if you treat your phone like a communication assistive device rather than the only way to communicate, it can be very useful. Just remember, that real-time face time is healthier for you in the long run!
For the original article go to: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/baig/2019/04/03/you-probably-text-each-other-even-at-home/3343620002/