Are you hiding behind your phone screen?

I have a problem. I talk better in written words. Some of my most potent and volatile conversations have been on the few inches of a phone screen. As my fat fingers slip on to multiple alphabets at once and the auto correct works more than full time to match up to my flared nostrils, my thoughts remain focused. They stand tall, undeterred by the environment , the chatter or the person in concern also. I just need to communicate. What the other person says can wait to be read later.

Why?

People are distracting to me. As an anxious person, I falter in my attention. While the other person is desperately trying to get my reaction , I may have at some point of time left the conversation thinking about how did I make this career choice in the first place.  This is what people do to me and as I age as a seasoned millennial, I have started to accept such little quirks of my personality. I mean its high time.

But this conversation isn’t about my weirdly mapped brain. It is about how technology has become that comforting best friend who protects us in different ways.

So, do you hide behind your phone?

I’ve seen so many of my friends and colleagues turn off their ‘blue tick’? Does it mean they are too bogged down by the compulsion to ‘respond when read’?

Does being tone deaf make for more productive communication? No matter what your poison is, WhatsApp, Telegram or DM’s, does it make more sense to write and leave the tone to the person’s interpretation so that you can come with your own set of “Conditions apply”.

And the other one that I am myself guilty of, turning off the display of being online and when I was last seen. I give no pleasure in fueling this ‘Mohalley ke uncle-aunty’ behavior and satisfying someone’s canards or their mental voyeurism. I garb it in the name of trust with close ones and definitely take the pleasure of not baring myself to the expectations of some people who assume the only job I have is to respond to their one message.

So what does this say about us?

I could hardly find any solid material on Texting app behaviors so I went to my trusted friend ChatGpt and asked it this question.

It promptly responded that the Blue tick behavior could relate to anything from being privacy conscious, avoiding conflict or the desire to control the when and what of the conversation.

It told me that choosing a digital conversation over a real one reveals that one has comfort with technology, is better at writing and mostly to manage anxiety. It’s time so say the age old seasoned millennial phrase “ I already told you so.”

I didn’t probe further because if would throw up the same answers. It boils down to more control of a little bit of our life. What was previously a dopamine hit coming from instant connections and the novelty in technology itself is today an addition to the list of other social responsibilities.

I guess we are all in some way guilty of hiding behind our phones. From avoiding direct cross fires to camouflaging our anxieties or delaying the stress for a later time. No matter what your reason is, it is a good time ask why we choose to have convenient rather than meaningful conversations. We thrown in some emojis and gifs to spruce up the shallowness of connections and dig our faces into our screens  to hide the space and silence between us.

There are no clinical answers but to find a way for ourselves. But its a good start to ask why?

In the meanwhile I will just rush back to my half read conversation that I left on seen.