How are all these people getting together … When everyone is (supposed to be) accessible?

After my first year of university, I was miserable. 

It wasn’t just because I missed my friends from Dal or because I was back home in Oshawa, Ont. Its nickname, “the Dirty ‘Shwa,” speaks for itself. 

I was miserable because of a name popping up, or actually not popping up, on my phone. 

I started seeing Nathan in April of first year. Since we were about to leave for the summer, we agreed to keep things casual. 

Over the summer, we messaged every day and even visited each other. He eventually said he wanted to keep seeing me casually, but I noticed something was changing. 

Suddenly, one-minute intervals between messages became one hour, then 10 hours, then 24 hours. I went from talking to someone all day to waiting all day for a response. After months of messaging, I was suddenly cut off; my mood relying on whether a certain Bitmoji appeared on my screen. 

Long gone are the days of people calling, planning a date and showing up. Now, there’s high-stakes pressure to be in constant communication, and everyone is stressed for no meaningful reason. Getting left on delivered is anxiety-inducing, and forgetting to respond fills you with guilt. 

How are all these people getting together when everyone is (supposed to be) accessible?

Constantly staying in contact with your partner isn’t a new normal for our age group; it starts even younger.

One 2007 study found that teenagers have higher rates of texting in relationships than older individuals, with 20 per cent of teenagers admitting to texting their partner 30 times an hour during after-school hours. 

Those stats date back to when the most popular cellphones were flip phones. If those are the habits teens had when typing one letter took three clicks, imagine how much worse it is today.

Constantly texting in our teens sets an early precedent that we need to habitually be in touch. If we aren’t, something must be wrong.

When I first started seeing Draper — a nickname for a long-term situationship of mine — it was more like what casual dating used to be. We texted when we wanted to make plans, had date nights and little communication in between. 

Though we saw each other regularly, my preconceived expectation that we should constantly be messaging made the silence between dates frustrating. I crafted texts to continue conversation, only to be met with radio silence. I became anxious over how he felt, which made him feel guilty, and suddenly we were both unhappy, adding stress to an already complicated situation. 

Theresa DiDonato, a psychology professor at Loyola University Maryland, wrote about this “cycle of mobile relationship maintenance” for Psychology Today. 

She says when people text a lot, it creates a feeling of obligation to text back. This dependence can restrict people from other parts of their lives, even giving less attention to careers or friendships. 

DiDonato also says texting causes miscommunication. When you can’t see someone’s facial expressions or hear their tone, their words can be misinterpreted. 

One time, a friend asked me for help responding to a guy. Scrolling through their messages, I was shocked at her frequent use of periods. Although grammatically correct, periods in texts always felt harsh to me. It’s like a big stop sign screaming, “Something’s wrong!”

I’ve spent countless minutes staring at a planned message waiting to hit send, trying to gauge how it could be interpreted. What if a sarcastic joke comes off bitchy instead of funny?

Some of my friends defend regular texting in dating. They like that you can get to know someone, even before a first date. 

Logan Ury, author of the book How to Not Die Alone, says this preliminary get-to-know-you stage can cause a problem she coins “the Monet effect.”

Ury says, when texting, we get little insights into someone’s life, and subconsciously make a “rough sketch” of them — filling in blanks with flattering assumptions and setting our expectations too high. But reality rarely meets preconceived fantasies, which often leaves constant communicators quickly disappointed. 

Just because someone is charming over text, when they have unlimited time to come up with witty responses, doesn’t mean they’re like that in real life. 

Constant texting can also make you overly invested in a person, even when you’ve barely hung out. You’ve already devoted time to learning about their week, their likes and dislikes, their hobbies and their family. 

All this can culminate in a promising date turning into a torturous experience. 

One where you’re scrambling for filler subjects — since you’ve already covered everything over text — to avoid awkward silence. When you finally land on one, you discover the conversation just isn’t flowing the way it did over text, and your hope and expectations come crashing down around you.

Texting is not only causing miscommunication and setting unreachable expectations. It’s also changing how we communicate in real life. 

Talking to someone through a screen creates the appearance of distance, where people find it’s easier to say things that would normally be awkward or hurtful, writes DiDonato. 

This disconnect also has psychological repercussions. DiDonato writes that people who send and receive these emotionally charged texts are more likely to have greater attachment anxiety, fear of rejection and low self-esteem. 

Having difficult talks in person, while uncomfortable, is respectful and ensures both parties fully understand what the other is saying. Each in-person conversation is practice for the next one. When people consistently opt out of having difficult conversations in person, it weakens their ability to have them. 

Consistently texting is ironically letting us “talk” more while hindering our communication skills, setting our expectations too high and even desensitizing us to each other’s feelings. 

When you speak with someone in person, you can read their body language and facial expressions, making it easier to empathize with them. Meaningful connections are made by talking face-to-face, not by typing messages into a glowing screen.