Technology can’t replace the human touch

As an older-than-typical mother of a 14-year-old, I’ve gotten used to my daughter’s facility with digital appliances and my obvious limitations with them. She’s a digital native, after all. So I try not to yell when she jerks my cell phone from my hand because I’m using it, in her view, incorrectly. She is faster, more proficient, more agile with digital devices. She has played around with cellular phones and laptop computers enough to figure out how to do all sorts of things with all sorts of apps. Her facility with PowerPoint is such that she creates, with bells and whistles, any presentations for my classes.

Still, I believe there are a few things I can teach her about communicating the old-fashioned way. Her adolescent rebellious streak often shows itself in her dismissive comments about my instructions: “You’re old,” she’ll say. It’s true. And I’m also old-school.

I believe, for example, in handwritten thank-you notes to people who have taken the time to assist her with homework or picked out perfect gifts for her. Since her generation hasn’t learned cursive, she has to write legibly in print. “Can’t I just type them?” she’ll ask; her generation has learned keyboarding skills from, of course, an app.

“No, you have to write them by hand.” There is something about the warmth and intimacy of a handwritten note that a typed note cannot convey. (A text message doesn’t come close.) As just one example, my daughter wrote by hand a lovely note to a beloved science teacher who taught her a few years ago and still takes the time to tutor her after school. When the note, which included a drawing of a Christmas present, was presented along with an actual gift, the teacher told my daughter that “the note was the best part.” The teacher may hold on to it for years to come.

Technology has so changed the world in a few short decades that my daughter’s school embraces it. By fifth grade, students start using laptops loaded with educational software. The school also uses an educational content management system onto which teachers load assignments, grades and class schedules. I am grateful for a system that allows my daughter — and me — to so easily track her work.

The internet has made it much easier for me to conduct research, tend to my banking and conduct my classes. Without Zoom, I’m not sure how I would have made it through the pandemic shutdown. There is no doubt that technology has created opportunity, promoted advancement and boosted performance in many arenas.

But there is a significant downside to this brave new world. Even as it has created jobs, technology has also eliminated whole categories of employment. One hardly hears of stenographers anymore, and bank tellers are already following suit. Retail stores are shutting down as customers shift to online shopping. Factories are replacing humans with robots.

Far worse is the way in which technology has allowed misinformation to spread faster and faster. Shadow worlds of weird conspiracies thrive online. False information about COVID-19, spread in online forums, still stalks us, hampering efforts to control the virus.

I do what I can to limit my daughter’s exposure to the riskier corners of the online world. Recognizing my incompetence in those realms, I spent 45 minutes — online, of course — learning how to set up parental controls on her various devices. But, again, she’s better at this stuff than I am, so I don’t think it will be long before she finds a way to circumvent them.

Still, I haven’t given up.

That’s why I will spend the rest of the holiday season nagging her to write thank-you notes by hand.