We’re losing the art of spontaneous conversation
It hit me late one afternoon on the train back from Trani, a lovely seaside city in Puglia, Italy.
In the seat a row ahead, facing us, there was a restless older man who kept trying to make conversation with a younger man sitting diagonally across the aisle.
Their exchanges were in quickfire Italian, so I only made out a few words and couldn’t be sure if they were strangers or knew one another.
What was clear was that while the older man (who had a cell phone in his hand, which he only engaged with briefly when it rang once) was hoping to initiate a passionate discussion — leaning forward in his seat, trying to make eye contact, using hand gestures — the younger man was intent on his phone, which he was using to watch videos and read articles.
At one point the younger man made a short, self-deprecating remark that caused the older man to laugh heartily. I realized that that’s what he was seeking: direct human connection.
FIXATED ON PHONES
Many times recently, on buses and trains, I’ve looked at the people around me — often university-age travellers — to find nearly everyone fixated on a glowing screen, except my husband and me. (I have a cellphone, he doesn’t. I would much rather talk to him than stare at it.)
But we’re a different generation. We remember life without smartphones. We used to have to dial someone up on a rotary phone and hope that their line was free and they were at home.
Heck, I remember the time before dial phones, when you picked up the phone and an operator would be on the other end, asking: “Number please.”
DIGITAL ENCAPSULATIONS OF OUR LIVES
But now cell phones are ubiquitous — 33 million phones among Canada’s population of roughly 40 million people — and using them to make phone calls is the least of their attractions.
Cell phones have become the digital encapsulations of our lives. They contain contact information for friends and family, they are our personal photo albums (remember actual photo prints?), the paper messages we once surreptitiously exchanged in class, our social and business calendars, our banking portals, our newsstands, and our gateway to browsing the internet, sending emails and interacting with social media.
And because they are all of those things, we cannot bear to part with them.
Some people use them to watch videos, play music and to make phone calls even when in a crowd — on a bus, plane, train or sitting outside at a restaurant — no matter how many people they are disturbing in the process.
Cell phones can make rude citizens out of those who would otherwise be thoughtful and considerate.
‘WE DON’T TALK ENOUGH’
Riding on a bus one day to Alberobello, Italy, home of the coneroofed 14th- and 15th-century trulli houses, I was amazed at the cacophony of voices all around us in multiple languages.
But it wasn’t passengers speaking animatedly to each other (though some did that while still texting and scrolling on their phones), but rather having long, loud phone conversations or watching videos with the volume cranked up.
It reminded me of a recent Saltwire Network article I read by Laura Churchill Duke, headlined “We don’t talk enough.”
In it, Holland College communication instructor Gaylene Nicholson of Charlottetown says that thanks to the ease of interchange offered by technology, “we have gotten away from the social graces of chit chat” — something she has witnessed.
SEE YA, SMALL TALK
Nicholson said it wasn’t that long ago that students would make small talk as they waited for her class to begin. Now there is silence because everyone is engaged with their phones or laptops.
She suggests young people practice making conservation, to combat social anxiety and awkwardness and to make “the positive human connections” that are “very important to our emotional well-being.”
It’s good advice.
Back on the bus, I scanned the crowd. Everyone was looking raptly at their phones, each person an island.
Devices may be conveniently distracting, or a means of self-soothing, but by being so dependent on them what we’re actually doing is losing the art of up-close-and-personal human interaction.