Death By Text Message | A Lamentation
Are those addicted to their phones contributing to a rise in street-level, home, and workplace conflict? Counsellors and professional mediators seem to think so. And the children and youth who have ended their lives due to bullying on social media? And the people maimed or killed by distracted drivers?
BYU/Nystrom & Associates/PT/State Farm | Overuse of cell phones can hinder face-to-face encounters, decrease the quality of relationships, and cause misunderstandings, all of which can have a detrimental effect on communication. Even if a phone is not being used, its presence can provide distractions that prevent people from participating fully in and connecting with others in real-time discussions.
1. Disrupted Face-to-Face Interactions
Phubbing
The act of snubbing or ignoring someone in a face-to-face interaction by constantly checking or using your phone is called "phubbing".
Reduced Engagement
Even when trying to pay attention, a part of the brain may still be focused on the phone, anticipating notifications, which can impair focus and engagement in the conversation.
Weakened Social Bonds
Studies show that the presence of mobile devices in social settings can negatively impact human relationships.
2. Misinterpretations and Misunderstandings
Lack of Nonverbal Cues
Texting or messaging lacks the nonverbal cues (body language, facial expressions) that are crucial for effective communication and understanding.
Misinterpreted Intent
Tone and intent can be easily misconstrued in written communication, leading to arguments or misunderstandings that might not have occurred face-to-face.
Emotional Intelligence
Research suggests that individuals who are too focused on their phones during face-to-face interactions may have difficulty understanding another person's emotions, which can impact the quality of the relationship.
3. Impact on Relationships
Decreased Relationship Satisfaction
Overuse of cell phones can lead to feeling disconnected and less satisfied in relationships with family and friends.
Less Meaningful Conversations
Studies indicate that excessive phone use can lead to less meaningful conversations and a weaker relationship.
Impact on Work and Family Life
Constant phone use can hinder the ability to engage in deep conversations, which are essential for building strong relationships and a sense of team.
In essence, while cell phones offer numerous benefits, their overuse can create significant barriers to effective communication and damage relationships by reducing the quality of face-to-face interactions and increasing the potential for misunderstandings.
Impaired Judgement
Insurance companies and courts deal with a lot of cases where people use their cell phones while driving and cause serious injuries and deaths.
NHTSA | In 2023, an estimated 3,275 people were killed and 330,000 people were injured in crashes involving distracted drivers. While not all distracted driving incidents are directly related to cell phone use, a significant portion are, with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reporting that 12% of fatal distraction-affected crashes involved cell phone use
Recent conversations have provided this blogger brutal reminders of the power of technologies that enable instant and shallow communication, brutish communication wrapped up in a two dimensional package that has about as much beauty and care in it as a hand grenade.
CAA (Canada) | Mobile phone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes annually.
Abusus non tollit usum?
Screenagers of all ages end otherwise normal relationships by texting "no further contact" after tapping "thank you" into a messaging app, as if the other person does not merit the respect of a conversation. The textophile sends her 'Dear John' or his 'Dear Jane' texts with the ease of ordering dinner from an online delivery service, unwilling to face the discomfort or embarrassment of cutting someone off, of leaving someone undeserving with such an amputation.
"Oh, but it's never that easy," saith the toxic empath. "They're probably doing the best they can." 'B' as in... baloney! A younger generation has in large part taken on the worst habits of those belonging to a progressive and ideology-driven older generation frequently incapable of accepting responsibility for their actions. They terminate contact or shut down conversations with the grammar of a guillotine and, habituated as they are to exerting control and power over places and people, add their sins to the collective weight of a society sick with sin. They are possessed by a need to wield power over others while attempting to avoid culpability for ruining lives.
Along for the Ryder
And people wonder why decent people turn into monsters when they are repeatedly demeaned and dehumanized by monstrous behaviour. In the psychological horror-thriller movie The Hitcher (1986), a psychopath played brilliantly by actor Rutger Hauer is picked up by a young man returning a rental vehicle from the Midwest to the Westcoast of the United States. The young driver soon realizes the danger that Hauer's character presents and leaves the hitchhiker behind as soon as circumstances permit.
While transporting a car from Chicago to San Diego, Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) picks up a hitchhiker named John Ryder (Rutger Hauer), who claims to be a serial killer. After a daring escape, Jim hopes to never see Ryder again. But when he witnesses the hitchhiker murdering an entire family, Jim pursues Ryder with the help of truck-stop waitress Nash (Jennifer Jason Leigh), pitting the rivals against each other in a deadly series of car chases and brutal murders. | Google AI Review
Hauer's character, aptly named Ryder, wages psychological terror on Halsey by attacking innocent people along the same route he is driving, at one point appearing as a passenger in a family vehicle that passes Halsey. Halsey is forced to adapt and becomes the thing he fears and hates most. Ryder succeeds in turning a decent kid into a monster. Evil delights in destroying innocence.
Hell on Earth
Fewer and fewer people these days have the guts to confront their wrongdoing. They fail to engage others in truly respectful ways, especially those in close emotional proximity. They see no difficulty in using others to enforce their decisions, to assist the execution of bad actions. They simply declare bankruptcy and leave a trail of devastation. If only their moral credit score could be published to spare the next potential investor serious hurt.
Not everyone has been raised right. A Christian ethos has been exiled from the public square, and in it's place ten thousand misguided policies intended to micromanage behaviours for some tentative benefits have been imposed in schools, colleges and workplaces.
G.K. Chesterton | When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom, you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.
Far too many adults are replaying again and again their childhood wounds and habits formed in them by parents and/or relatives barely conscious of morality. They - the parents - live hedonistic lives trapped in a utilitarian mindset, where children - if not treated as an outright inconvenience - are tolerated and taught little, little other than how not to be a hindrance to their parents' comfort. Raised by parents who themselves had little or no moral bearing, is it surprising, then, that their children act according to the same playbook as their parents and grandparents? Do they even have both parents at home? Lacking a moral compass, people too easily descend into depravity and call it virtue.
A play within a play.
One script reads, "I have met someone else. We've moved in together. Thank you for your generosity. We can have no further contact." What she avoided saying is, "I didn't do my part to communicate, to honour our relationship." She should have added, "You supported me more than I deserve." The conclusion to the fairy tale is, "I'm returning the favour by hooking up with another person in order to close the door on you and me. End of story. Get lost." The guillotine blade has dropped. Perhaps she thinks that she is not worthy of another's devotion, so she chooses a less virtuous path and surgically enacts finality to ease the transition. Will she be certain that her new fling, who may be aware of what his partner (in crime) has done, won't understand himself as anything but a co-conspirator used to facilitate the termination of a relationship? O what a tangled web.
Robert Royal at The Catholic Thing | For the mature Augustine – i.e., the Christian thinker after he freed himself from the confusions of Manicheanism and his personal lusts – everything is moved by love. Good loves or bad loves, but loves all the same because the Creator created the world out of a selfless love. And everything he made is worthy of our love, properly understood. But there’s the difficulty. Since the Fall, our loves are disordered. So much so that Augustine explains evil itself as a lack of a proper love in the right place, at the right time, to the proper degree. Love rightly ordered lifts us up. Wrongly ordered love weighs us down. | Augustine, Augustinianism, and the New Papal Moment
Disposable and Discarded
Is it any wonder that so many relationships and marriages fail when convenience becomes a criterion for a viable relationship? It's only a matter of time until both partners wake up next to each other, in their comfortable society-approved cohabitation, and either bless their compromise with additional self-deceptions, or they walk, as in flee, to explore new "more satisfying" people. People who use their smartphones as toys to craft relationships shouldn't be surprised to discover they treat human beings like toys, and emotions like playthings. What of trust? It evaporates, and instead of a deeper movement into betrothal, the couple dallies with betrayal. Instead of forming a partnership, they dissociate and divide. Relationships, once meant to be permanent, are merely provisional. Instead of fidelity, there is fraud. Instead of fruitfulness, there is infertility—emotional, spiritual, and possibly physical.
Say what?!
Toys are primarily meant for entertainment and recreation. Some technologies that may be used for a good purpose are also designed to exploit and capitalize on man's vulnerabilities. With guidance, they can be used to teach positive skills. Without guidance and the will to do good, a toy can become a weapon used not to protect but to harm the innocent and to destroy. One's character and training determine how a toy (or tool) might be used.
A phone is a toy and/or drug to many. The term 'smartphone' only applies to the phone, not so much to its user. - GN
Sheryl Collmer @ Crisis Magazine
It is so much easier to destroy than to build. It takes barely a second and hardly any effort to tear something down; it requires no imagination, dedication, or moral perseverance.
Watch a young child carefully build a crenellated castle out of blocks, an all-day labor of love, then proudly display his work to his parents. Watch another child eye the enjoyment and casually kick the castle down in an instant. The ratio of time and energy is 100 to 1.
A man can start his own business with a product he invented, building up something useful to the community—and a destroyer can come along with no expertise at all and burn the business down, physically or through commercial dirty tricks.
A parent pours all of his or her heart and life into raising a child, but a malefactor can come along and damage or destroy that child in a single moment. The ratio is incalculable.
It’s so easy to destroy.
It requires character, vision, and energy to build something, but absolutely anyone can destroy. The ratio is so overwhelming in favor of destruction that it’s a wonder we build anything at all. It’s all so fragile.
One could adapt Collmer's observation by stating, "It requires character, vision, and energy to build a relationship, but absolutely any careless person can destroy another person's life by their negligent behaviour and/or infidelity."
How many times have you, dear reader, witnessed a decent person suffer miserably because of another person's indifference and callous behaviour? Some might retort, "Well, that's life." Does that mitigate culpability? Is that supposed to lessen the pain? The phrase smacks of surrender. Yes, we are born into a fallen world. That such pain and suffering exists should provide ample evidence of the reality of sin and the need for help, for God's grace, to overcome the despair and dislocation of hearts and minds beaten and broken by ignorance and malice.
As Christians, we are called by God to pray and work for the coming of the Kingdom, God's reign of love, truth, goodness, and beauty. We are not complacent bystanders, mere spectators watching sinners slaughter themselves and others. We do not surrender to the zeitgeist of que sera, sera. Christians are spiritual warriors called to do battle with the world, the flesh, and the devil. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake (St. Matthew 5).
Lovelorn?
Everything can be done correctly: assist someone emotionally, financially, and practically; recreate and spend time with them; show them respect; and love them unconditionally, willing their best interests. The other person may, however, behave like a conceited fool, or just a fool. After moving an hour away for work, he or she may not have the manners to return the favour and may not visit as frequently as you do. If someone consistently refuses to get in the car to travel for an hour or two for a visit, it might be time to have a talk about commitment. Responsible people make time for important things, the things that matter. Respectable people are upfront about their intentions. Ergo, if someone is not making time for you, tell them how much you miss them and need them to visit you. If they fail to respond or attempt to deflect attention away from the issue, pray for wisdom, turn the other cheek, and let his or her (non) answer echo in the room. If they have ears to hear... .
"But I just don't feel that way toward you anymore." Yes, of course, feelings can and do change. The saying goes that when one is ruled by one's feelings, then the body is likely to make promises the head cannot keep. Whatever happened, however, to honouring one's word? What happened to the principle of not starting something unless you're ready to see it through? Formation in honour and perseverance is sorely lacking these days. It used to be that a person given to shallow behaviour was subject to ridicule and to be avoided because his habits were a cause of grief and chaos. The cost of excusing bad behaviour is a mile-wide crater overflowing with the victims of miscreants.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10 | (The Lord) said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong.
Do we forgive those who have used us like throwaway paper towels? Indeed, we must. Our salvation depends upon it. Must we excuse their actions? No, absolutely not! Our forgiveness acknowledges the wrongs and the undeserved injustices committed against us. Grace can work through forgiveness on both the one who has done harm and the one who has been harmed. Forgiveness frees one from the trap of a grudge and from despair. Forgive us our trespasses... . Forgiveness, importantly, reminds us of our own need for forgiveness and mercy. Forgiveness born of God's grace enables us to love those who have wronged us. We pray that those who have wronged us may come to their senses and repent. We entrust them to God, Who can reach even the most paralyzed or petrified hearts.
God may place people in situations whereby they might confront the content of their lives, the quality of their actions. When confronting a crisis, a person may, in the flux of thoughts and emotions, wake up to acknowledge the wrong they have done, to make a change for the better, to turn to God, and be reconciled.
Complaints against mistreatment have a well established history.
Psalm 109:1-5
Be not silent, O God of my praise!For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me,speaking against me with lying tongues.They beset me with words of hate,and attack me without cause.In return for my love they accuse me,even as I make prayer for them.So they reward me evil for good, and hatred for my love.
Psalm 91:1-2;11-12
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, who abides in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.”
Further Reading/Viewing
- https://firstthings.com/how-i-kicked-my-phone-habit/
- https://x.com/DeChristianLife/status/1926609206808842265?t=nJOlNgQkUKmFgyHxtKvKkQ&s=03
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