Impersonal Communication Exposed

A celebrity was interviewed on GMA talking about the response to a photo of her indicating she is very slender. Immediately after posting the picture, she was deluged by critics using Twitter to express their negative opinions of her slimness.

I was reminded of an incident when I was subbing at a local high school. The students work was done for the day, and the ninety minute block was plodding along through the final half hour. All the students were on their electronic devices listening or texting or whatever they were enjoying. I went over to a girl sitting in the front of a row and loudly exclaimed, " You make me mad!"

Conversations stopped. It became deathly quiet. Students looked up from their devices. The poor girl looked up it terror. She had, "what did I do?" written all over her face. I gave things a minute to sink in. Then I asked, "What would you have done if I had texted that to you?" That began the most beautiful discussion involving the whole class. They figured out all by themselves that texting something which elicits a response, be it proper or not, is far different than looking at each other face to face and saying the same things. They opined that communication is best when you can observe obvious body language , something not present with a text. Emoticons don't count. They agreed that it is easy to say something nasty while hiding behind the device which publishes the comment.

As the class left, I received many positive comments, thanking me for setting up the forum for debate and ultimately making them aware of something they participate in daily without thought for the consequences. The beautiful girl I had singled out to start the discussion smiled at me, saying she understood exactly what I did, and wasn't mad at me at all. She even thanked me for choosing her.