Thread by @RobertAlai

Phones have connected but also disconnected us. People with thousands of friends online are lonely because we killed voice conversation.

We think that we have reached out and talked to someone just because we texted them.

We are avoiding “negativity” and “friction” in our lives by avoiding voice and face to face conversations.

But friction fans negativity helps develop us to be complete human beings. We are losing out humanity by sticking to text only.

In 2007, voice lost to text. In China alone, over 700 billion text messages were sent in China alone that year.

Text is emotionless. Emoticons and emojis have failed to inject emotion back to text despite the attempt.

There’s an assault on empathy. We want to type the perfect coolmment, response, tweet or Facebook post.

We have lost our phone communication skills. When did you pick a call without knowing the caller?

We fear the unknown and so we don’t know how to communicate with strangers

We have left communication to machines. We are killing person to person interactions and so we lack empathy and understanding.

We should call and talk more. We must also visit each other more.

We have friends who lose loved ones and even before they reach out and inform close loved ones, they send a message asking for funds.

Do we call and empathize with them? We’d rather text.

Phones have changed what we do and who we are. We think we are connected because we chat online but we are disconnected.

To text or to talk? Thanks @SandraKanthal for the insights. I should call you.