Back in the 80s and 90s, how did parents find their teenagers in the house? Possibly by following the long phone cord and seeing where it led. And how did they talk to their kids? Probably by yelling, “Get off the phone!” and then having a face-to-face conversation. Contrast that with today’s interactions. Parents find their (older) kids by sending them a text message and often proceed to have entire conversations, and even negotiations, this way. Texting with parents seems to peak at ages thirteen to fifteen, but is widely used at many ages.1 Text-based communications are unlike spoken ones, for better and worse. When asked, parents reported multiple reasons for why they like texting with their kids, including:
•“I can communicate even when my son is at school or at work and know that he will see it eventually, during his breaks. I can send it and stop thinking about it.”
•“I can get an immediate response most of the time.”
•“In addition to our being able to get ahold of them, texting also allows our kids to send us messages in an easy way when we’re at work. It goes both ways.”
•“I’m more likely to get a straight answer.”
•“One of the real advantages of texting with my kids is that there is proof of what I told them to do!”
Another big advantage is the emotional distance you get when you’re not in the same physical space. You can think through what you want to say before you send a text, and to read over what you’ve written before you send it (though we don’t always take advantage of this). You also get the chance to remain firmer in your decisions and rules. We have a harder time saying no to people when we’re face-to-face than when we interact via technology.2 Sometimes the pressure of the real-time, out-loud moment can be a little too much, leading us to concede just for the sake of ending the conversation. The same conversation over text, though, can provide the space to think through your position more carefully.
Stories from Home: I find that it’s much easier to say no and to lay down the law over a screen. I hate saying no to my kids when they want to see their friends because I know how important that is to them, but I also know that too many late nights don’t end well. When they ask over text, I do a better job of looking at the big picture.
The extra space is an equalizer of sorts—studies show that people in lower-status positions in organizational settings are more likely to speak up when communicating electronically than they might be in a face-to-face setting.3 Though your child probably doesn’t have a problem speaking up to you in person most of the time, it’s still possible that some difficult or awkward conversations could be made easier with the distance inherent in text-based conversations.
Stories from Home: My son told me he was gay in a text. I think this was much easier for him to do than to have to tell me this face-to-face, even though we talked about it out loud afterward.
Emotions are also dampened when they’re written instead of expressed out loud. Think of the actual experience of being yelled at by your child, mid-tantrum, at any age. It’s very natural to feel your own emotions rise in response. Yet seeing the same words on a screen, even “shouted” by using all capital letters and exclamation points, is not likely to produce quite the same effect in you. Of course it can still be unpleasant, but it’s not the same. On the other hand, the physical distance could also encourage some to ramp up their negativity.
Stories from Home: Knowing that they won’t have to deal with my anger face-to-face makes my kids braver about nagging me this way. I actually think it gives my daughter more confidence to talk or yell or call me names because she can’t see or hear the impact, so she either thinks it hurts me less, or doesn’t care as much if it does.
When we type instead of speak, we reduce the number of words we use significantly. We can speak and listen very efficiently, but typing in any way (whether on a keyboard or on a touchscreen) makes us change the way we approach language. Thus, even though we may still be negotiating in some of these brief interactions, it might not jump out at us as a negotiation at the time. Consider this interchange between a mother and child via text, about texting:
Mother: Can you just come talk to me instead of texting please
Child: No
Mother: Why
Child: I’m comfy
Child: Texting is good for me
Mother: Why is texting good
Child: Texting is fine neither of us have to get up
Mother: Lol
Child: hehe
This is actually an entire negotiation accomplished using only thirty-six words. This can work. Here, the mother sought the child’s explanation for the stated position of not coming to speak out loud, and learned that it was a matter of physical comfort (i.e., she got to the “why”), and signaled that she was okay with that response and resolution. In other situations, though, the stripped-down nature of the communication could limit what gets understood and accomplished, and switching to another, richer medium might be worth it. Here’s another conversation that isn’t quite as clear:
Child: One of my teachers wasn’t here
Child: Can I eat his cookies for him so they don’t go bad
Child: ??
Child: Also, can I go hang out with George after school
Child: ?
Mother: No!!!!!
Child: Y
Child: Ur making new ones anyway
Mother: No, no to the after school thing because you know we’re going shopping today! And on the cookies, why don’t you bring them home and we’ll all have them for dessert.
Child: They will go stale
Mother: Not in a day they won’t. And you can’t eat them all by yourself!
Child: I will share
(Two hours later)
Child: Can I??
Mother: If it’s really important to you, we can go shopping another day.
Child: No the cookies
Child: Mom?
(Two hours later)
Child: Mom??
Mother: Sorry, I was in a meeting. Fine, do what you want with the cookies.
Although this conversation also eventually produced a resolution, it took more time and many more prompts and points of clarification before it was settled, and the final answer from the mother feels like it was arrived at out of exhaustion. Multiple ideas got discussed in an overlapping timeframe which led to misunderstandings, and the dragged-out conversation might have been irritating to both sides. It’s also worthy of note that there are generational differences in how we interact with technology. The mother used more words, used punctuation differently, and wrote more complete thoughts than the child.
Stories from Home: My fourteen-year-old daughter just told me yesterday that the way I send texts is all wrong. I use too many periods, and I don’t use phrases like “Yayyyyyy!”
In addition, few adults can text at the same speed as a teen who uses this medium as a primary tool of communication with friends. In any kind of heated interaction, not being able to get your words out fast enough, and/or more slowly than the other side, can increase your frustration as well as decrease your opportunities to exert influence.4
Stories from Home: I refuse to text with my kids because I’m just too slow at the typing.
Dictating speech to a smartphone is about three times faster than texting in the traditional way,5 but many people still don’t use this method. Instead, we may end up just saying less overall, which adds another cost in addition to the nuance we lose (facial expressions, voice intonations) when we’re not facing each other in real time. Humor, which can work wonders for building connections, breaking the ice, and defusing tension can also fall flat in a text-based exchange.
Stories from Home: My daughter texted me asking to stay over at a friend’s house for dinner. I jokingly replied that she needed to come home ASAP to make dinner for me and her brother. Obviously, since she is fourteen and has never made dinner in her life, I did not expect her to actually make anything. However, she took it seriously and called me and freaked out on me before I even had the chance to tell her I was joking!! She continued to be upset even after I explained. This was a silly case of misinterpretation that could have been avoided had it been on the phone or in person where she could hear the sarcasm in my voice.
Besides the straight-up misunderstandings, the more frequent problem is subtler. Text changes the way we interpret each other’s comments and the amount of connection that we feel with the other person. Cooperation itself is reduced in text-based exchanges because we focus more on our own self-interest and less on the well-being of others when we’re not in the same space.6 This is a big problem because when we lose the general goodwill and desire to see good things happen for the other person, we’re much more likely to head for strong conflict.
We tend to assume that we’re going to be well understood in our meaning despite the fact that we know that text is missing some of the cues we get from voice and visual channels. We try and make up for some of this by using signals, such as using all capital letters for emphasis.
Stories from Home: My daughter was at a dance competition and I couldn’t be there. There was a problem with her costume, and so she texted me asking permission to wear part of someone else’s costume (something racy that I didn’t approve of). She was under pressure and her text came at me in all caps. I told her no, also in caps. After a couple of texts, all in caps, my last text said “I’m not there, so you’ll have to figure something out” but it wasn’t in caps. She decided that meant I had backed down, so she went ahead and wore it.
We’re generally more sure than we should be that our meaning is clear to others. This problem of overconfidence (the tendency to assume that we’re better than we actually are) in terms of making the other person understand our true meaning when we communicate comes out even more strongly in text as opposed to speech.7
We may understand that, in theory, text-based communicating lacks some of the cues we need to be effectively understood by others, but in reality, we don’t actually expect it to limit our own interactions. We think we’re being understood just fine, but it turns out we are not. There’s so much more to communication than just the words.
Key Point: Take advantage of the benefits of texting with your kids, including easier access to their attention and the chance to be more definitive, while remaining mindful of the challenges and loss of richness in the communication process.
When we interact with our kids in a face-to-face environment, there are a lot of things happening at once. Imagine a situation in which your child is upset and you are trying to comfort them. You might want to sit close, put your arm around them, talk in a soothing way, and perhaps even do something together like have a cup of hot cocoa. What is it that actually provides the stress relief? Is it your words, the physical touch, the comforting smells of you yourself and the hot cocoa? Each of these may play a role, but the various elements of what speech is and how it helps us relate to one another has been the subject of some very interesting research.
Given that humans have always used speech as the primary method of communicating, one research team set out to examine exactly what, on a biological level, happens when someone speaks out loud to another person. By studying mother-daughter pairs, they established that hearing soothing words from the mother after a stressful event was just as calming, on a physiological level, as was getting an actual hug from her.8 Clearly, speech is a fundamental and critical way of connecting with our kids, and has incredible emotional power.
But how does it compare to conveying messages without the verbal speaking-and-listening elements? If there are differences between speaking out loud and texting, is it because we tend to choose different language for the two different types of communication? Or is it instead due to some other elements of spoken words, such as tone of voice? To explore this, the researchers exposed teenage girls to a stressful event by having them engage in both verbal and math tasks in front of an audience that did not respond to them at all, which is known to create a stress response.9
The participants were then divided into four groups:
•Group 1 interacted with their mothers face-to-face,
•Group 2 had the chance to just rest on their own and not interact with anyone,
•Group 3 spoke out loud to their mothers over the phone, and
•Group 4 exchanged messages with their mothers via an instant messaging platform, but could not communicate in any other way.
The parents were instructed to be as supportive as possible to their daughters. After these interactions and a period of “down time” to relax and recover from the stressful event, the daughters’ stress hormone levels were checked, and the results showed a remarkable pattern. Two different tests of physiological stress both showed that those in groups 1 and 3 (the face-to-face interactors and the phone-based interactors) had significantly lower levels of stress hormones and higher levels of pleasure hormones than did those in groups 2 and 4 (those who did not interact at all and those who only interacted via text). In fact, the phone-call group was markedly similar to the face-to-face group overall. It did not seem to be the physical presence, nor the ability to look the other person in the eye, nor even being able to show sympathy or support via facial expressions or physical touch that created these positive results because the phone calls did much the same thing without any of those advantages. The text-based interaction presumably communicated the same content but did not provide the same level of stress relief. This demonstrates that spoken words are indeed a very different thing from texted words. Speech is a richer form of connecting than is text, even if the intent behind the conversation is the same.
Key Point: We need to work harder when using text-based negotiations to create the positivity that comes more naturally from words spoken aloud. If you can, sometimes switching to a phone call is worth it. If you can’t, go overboard with what you’re trying to provide for your kids via text, since so much of it seems to get lost in this medium.
We know that we use fewer words when we text than when we speak, but what kinds of words do we choose? Does language change in a systematic way when we text? To find out, another study content-coded all of the language in a random sample of several hundred text messages, and compared them to transcripts of a random set of several hundred telephone calls to see what was different in terms of their language use.10 Texts were shorter (90% of the text messages that they analyzed contained seventeen or fewer words each), and relied more heavily on visual options within language use (such as abbreviations and acronyms, “shorthand” speech such as omitting vowels or subject pronouns, or misspelling words on purpose).
The telephone conversations also tended to contain larger words (of at least six letters), and to have a shift in the pronouns that were used. Texters tended to rely on “I” and “you” as their pronouns of choice more often, whereas talkers used “we” and “us” more frequently. Even these smallest words can have great implications for the way a message feels to the other side. In online negotiations, people who use collective pronouns such as “we, us, and our” in their messages are perceived more friendly and are able to obtain better outcomes,11 as these words signal a sense of caring and inclusion to the other side. Our natural linguistic instincts when texting may work against the process of creating effective solutions.
Emotion also finds a way into our text-based communications in all settings, even at work.12 In no small part, this is because it does not take very much to trigger a large reaction over text. Even just the very few cues (emotion-laden words or symbols) that exist in a message can overwhelm the other parts and tilt the message’s overall tone. They’re more vivid and more memorable, and can end up being blown out of proportion.
Stories from Home: I swear, I didn’t mean anything by the text that I sent, but boy did my daughter jump to the wrong conclusion about my intent and got so mad at me!
In addition to the misinterpretation potential, there are three other complicating factors that make emotion difficult to assess in text:
•In text, the same types of markers (such as use of exclamation points) can be used to indicate either excitement or anger.
•Especially in the use of short-burst interactions such as texting, single words can end up carrying much more meaning because there are relatively fewer words used overall. A word that might be either lost or diluted by the sheer quantity of spoken words can instead stand out and take on much more significance in text.
•We seem to have a systematic bias toward interpreting messages as more negatively than they were intended—for positive messages, this can mean missing the positive intent and interpreting it as negative, and for neutral or slightly negative messages, this can mean an interpretation as extremely negative. This is perhaps because our brains are wired to pay much closer attention to negative information in general.13
More and more, people turn to the graphics now known as emojis (such as faces with various expressions, or a hand making an “OK” sign) to help convey their meaning. Even these can be the subject of their own miscommunications, as can be seen by the increasing number of times that disputed interpretations of emojis are now surfacing in court cases!14 Text-based communications across the board, even professional ones, are now rife with emojis. In fact, a recent study showed that nearly 20% of all work-related emails contain at least one (despite the risk of being perceived as less competent with their use in situations where the individuals do not already know one another).15 In personal communications, a visual cue to emotional tone can indeed be a helpful shortcut, and a way to fill in some of the context that’s missing when we can’t see and hear each other. Linguists have noted that the role of emojis in written text is quite similar to the role of gestures in spoken conversations. In many cases, popular emojis (like the winking face or the thumbs up) actually mimic the physical gestures that we use in face-to-face conversations.16 These symbols are an opportunity, and when clearly used, can help avoid misunderstanding and increase feelings of connection.
Key Point: Messages can sound negative even when they’re not intended that way. Graphics and emojis can help clarify intent.
Of course, technology plays a role in our lives beyond the immediate and direct communication-based uses. It also acts as a third wheel in our interactions, when one or both people have a phone in hand, for instance, during a conversation. In fact, in a recent Pew study, nearly three-quarters of parents reported feeling that their teen is at least sometimes distracted by their phone when they are trying to have a conversation with them, and one-third reported that this was often a problem. Teens similarly report that they feel their parents are also distracted by their phone during conversations with them.17
From either side, it can be frustrating and irritating to speak to someone whose eyes are down on a screen instead of looking at you.
Stories from Home: We have a “no phones in the car” rule, but over time, it had been slipping and my daughter was busy texting during our recent car trips. This came to a head the day her grandmother was also in the car with us and asked her a question which she didn’t hear, and when it was repeated, she gave a snotty “I don’t know!” as an answer. We had to start enforcing the rule again so at least when we are in that small space with each other, we can count on being able to have a normal conversation.
Perhaps surprisingly, both parents and children generally endorse rules about screen-free moments of time, such as during family meals.18
Beyond the surface-level annoyances, though, there are even more serious concerns. For adults and teens alike (and even many younger kids), the addiction to mobile devices is a very real thing. The thrill of incoming messages, the endless supply of auto-refilling material on social media or entertainment websites, and the validation that comes when other people respond to our own content—each of these activates the pleasure and reward areas of the brain. It’s no wonder that it’s difficult to put phones down. Trying to do both (look at the phone and engage with people at the same time) is unsuccessful on a number of levels. Although we think we can handle the interruptions to a conversation or a work task resulting from glancing down at a phone,19 cognitively speaking, humans are far less equipped to do this than it seems.20
We Engage Less
Though it may seem like we can listen to one person while also reading another message, scrolling through pictures, or “mindlessly” playing an online game, it turns out that our brains really don’t do this at all. We can focus on only one thing at a time, especially if that one thing involves language in any way. Instead, what we end up doing when we have two competing tasks or interactions running at the same time is flipping our attention back and forth from one source of input to the other, and hoping that we can fill in the missing pieces by making logical inferences. But, the actual words you said while I was reading a new text message that just arrived are more or less entirely lost. Sometimes I can play back the last moment from my short-term memory, but more often what I would do instead is listen to the next thing you said and then try to figure out the overall idea. So for each of the two tasks that are running simultaneously, we are not engaged in either one to a full degree.
We Remember Less
Switching between tasks has two cognitive costs over and above the possibility of missing some of what’s happening in real time. The first is the time lost between tasks—every time you need to reorient your mind to one conversation or the other, there is a small gap while your mind tries to catch up and remember what’s happening in this stream. The second layer is even more costly in terms of cognitive power: due to something called attention residue, task switching burns through even more brain power than it seems.21 Even when we feel ready to either pause or stop one task to focus on the other, the mind has, well, a mind of its own!
Imagine doing a single task, such as having a phone conversation with a friend. You chat, you tell stories, you ask and answer questions, and then you say goodbye and hang up. Are thoughts of your friend and this conversation immediately filed away as you now turn your attention to your next task or conversation? Not usually. Instead, we typically spend several minutes reviewing the conversation that just occurred. Snippets will replay in your head, and follow-up thoughts will pop up. This is a vivid example of something that happens more subtly when we stop any task that had our attention. Our minds need a moment to continue to process what happened, to think about what needs to be remembered, and to note what may need to happen next. This is more dramatic when we pause a task without finishing it, but it happens even if we completed something as well. So, if we have a phone nearby when also having a conversation out loud, the quick check-ins and back-and-forth switching of your attention can add up to a lot of time and energy spent on just trying to keep up. In the end, we make more errors and remember less of what occurred in either task than we would have if we had done each independently.
We Connect Less
People feel immediately more distant from each other if there is a phone present when they’re interacting. Psychologically, this makes sense because seeing the phone is a reminder that you might get interrupted at any moment. It also makes it clear that you do not have the undivided attention of the other person for very long, if at all. Even if the phone isn’t being used, studies show that having it in our line of sight limits the amount of trust and personal disclosure that people will engage in during a conversation.22 Seeing our own cell phones pulls our minds away from the here and now, dragging us into thoughts of social interactions, information, or entertainment. It’s not enough to decide not to engage with the phone, its mere presence is a real force that limits the interaction happening around it.
Key Point: Face-to-face interaction is limited by even the presence of a cell phone, let alone the actual act of engaging with it during conversations. During negotiations (or other moments of connection) with your kids or others, ideally, phones should be completely out of sight.
From the earliest, researchers have noticed that people can be more negative online than they are in person. This means they are more willing to use negative language, share negative news, and criticize other people or ideas online.23 Not only does seeing someone in a face-to-face manner give us more cues as to what that person is saying or feeling, it also gives us a nearly immediate sense of the reactions that our words are inciting in the other person. Without these reminders about how their words may be affecting others, people seem to be more self-serving, less supportive, and to engage in riskier decision making. But the difference in our behavior is not just the difference between face-to-face interaction and text-based interaction. Even compared to engaging in similar tasks on paper (and thus, still not having to look the other person in the eye), interacting through a screen seems to change how people think and act.
It doesn’t feel the same to email or text as it does to talk to someone directly or even write something on paper. It feels more fleeting, less permanent, and like it all doesn’t count as much. This is of course not true because text has the ability to live on in the world forever whereas spoken words do not. But the way that we have become accustomed to quickly typing and sending messages without deep thought or review seems to promote the feeling that it’s somehow less important. It’s easier to let ourselves be more self-centered or negative.
So does it matter which medium you use to negotiate? A recent review of many studies asked this very question.26 What they found was that tone matters more than medium. If the two have genuine goodwill toward each other, it matters far less what tool is used for the actual communication. If, instead, there is a more difficult or self-centered mindset between the two, then the more constrained channels (like texting instead of speaking out loud) could limit success. Other studies have noted that people are less likely to reach an agreement at all when negotiating via text, and specific limitations arise including the tendencies to make fewer offers, respond less well to questions, and become less likely to share true interests.27
Taken together, we can see that while there are advantages to communicating within your family via text—especially with respect to the comfort and openness that distance can bring to a difficult conversation—there are also hidden concerns. This may not matter in quick notes to convey information or to have an upbeat exchange on something, but when the issue is weightier, these notes of caution become more relevant.
Key Point: The overall message is not to avoid technology as a means of interacting with your kids, even on difficult matters or during negotiations. Instead, choose your moments wisely for those interactions, knowing that while some interactions benefit from the space that texting provides, there are significant limitations with respect to our language use, emotion-sharing, and connections to one another.
•Text is not the same. Language, tone, and interpretation all change in written conversations. While texting is convenient and useful in many situations, it may require even more attention to what you’re trying to accomplish in this negotiation.
•We all think we’re better than we actually are at being clear communicators. This problem is magnified when we use text. Though it can feel cumbersome, sometimes “less is more” doesn’t work and “more is more” is the right rule of thumb for explaining yourself.
•Phones limit engagement. Even the presence of a phone changes the depth of the interaction between people. Seeing it both reminds us of other tasks and lines of thought, and presents the real and present danger of interruption at any moment. For true moments of connection, put phones out of sight.
•Texting can buy you some space, but not provide comfort. If you think you need emotional distance, using text for some parts of the interaction can help keep you on an even keel. If you think support and comfort are more needed, remember that these, in particular, seem to get lost in translation in texts. Use your actual voice for those moments.
•Texts work better in simple situations. Negotiations can happen successfully via text, but we use far less language total when communicating this way, so it may be a limitation for more complex situations because we’re less likely to get to the true “why” in a situation. Make sure all of the elements you need to include are both thought out and spelled out.
NOTES
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