Two Day Magazine

As I type this on my Mac, I hear my blackberry humming in the background, signaling that I have received email. I pick up the blackberry to look at email (that I could just as easily access on my Mac) and then I see I have a text message. I go to answer text message, momentarily ignoring email, and then my blackberry rings. I go to answer it, but then realize if I do, I won’t probably finish this blog, as I will get sidetracked. Overwhelmed, I respond to none of them. That’s right. I respond to none of them.

We, as a society, have completely lost our minds since the birth of the cell phone and now it is starting to negatively affect how we interact with one another. Think of when someone asks you out on a date. People don’t actually speak to each other, anymore, they simply type to each other in broken text-ese. We have evolved past actually communicating face to face. If we like someone, we text: ‘wanna get 2gthr this wknd’? Or, ‘what r u up 2 tonite?’ How romantic. Instead of actually picking up the phone and calling each other back, we merely text: ‘where when?’ Or ‘nuthin. come ovr.’ Well, if that doesn’t get you all hot and bothered, I don’t know what will!

People are also consumed with interacting with people who aren’t around when they are around other people. The whole point of getting together on a date is to learn more about each other, see if you are both compatible, and to enjoy one another’s company. Our egos get in the way because cell phones give us a sense of false power. We think we are so busy with so many things to do that we have to communicate with people all day. No one needs to be that busy. It’s madness.

I was at dinner the other night, observing people around me, and noticed a young couple in the restaurant, clearly on a date, both texting on their cell phones while waiting for the bill. Has it come to this, people? Are we so distracted by our hand-held computers that we can’t even focus for an hour or so with a real live human sitting in front of us and just be?

My friend made a great point the other day by saying that people’s attention span has been reduced to 140 characters (that’s the full amount allotted on twitter). We dismiss people quickly now, because if they don’t entertain us in the first two minutes, we write them off as boring. But, people aren’t twitter accounts (thank goodness) and shouldn’t be reduced to 140 characters. It has gotten so bad that people have actually taken to twitter during their dates to tweet the full minute by minute, play-by-play of said date.

For example, I read an article of a girl who went out on a date recently, only to discover that the guy she was dating was tweeting every moment of the date to all of his followers. Here is a sample: “Just had the crab cakes! They were delicious!” “Jill just told me a funny joke. She is so cute!” “Had great sex tonight!” Are you serious? This guy was tweeting about sex? Needless to say, they are no longer dating.

So, what has the technology done for our love lives? Nothing good. We are breaking up with one another via text message and email, just to avoid the awkward (human) interaction of having to confront an issue and deal with it, thus making us weaker as a species. We are asking one another out on dates this way instead of taking an initiative and looking someone in the eye. We have no idea how to communicate our emotions and feelings, because when you remove them from the equation, which you inevitably do when you are using a keypad, we have removed the humanness from our lives. All of these gadgets are great shortcuts and are great in avoiding what we really need. Love, affection, and attention.

We think by using this technology, we can connect to more people, faster and better, but alas. We are really disconnecting with every click of the keys. So, today, I encourage everyone, whether you are dating or just with friends, to go out, sans mobile device, and reconnect with those in your life that need you (and all of you) without the distractions, without the bravado, without the bells and whistles. Just you, just them, just real human interactions to reestablish our ability to do what humans do best. Feel.