When you pick up your phone, how often are you using it to actually do what it
was first intended for? How often are you actually talking on the phone? And I don’t mean talking via text, or email, or some other form of digital communication. I mean actually talking. Picking up the phone and calling someone.
If you’re like most people today, your answer is probably something like very rarely.
You want me to call you?
For many people, today calling is our second option, or even our 3rd! Tell me if you’re guilty of this… Someone doesn’t reply to your email, an email that’s fairly time sensitive. So you pick up your phone and text them, Hey, did you get my email? No response to that… then maybe, just maybe, you’ll pick up the phone and give them a call.
I’m sure most of us have done some form of this in the past. Calling someone just isn’t something that you do. I mean, we call our parents or grandparents, but that feels different… and most of them might not text so you have to call.
But we all also know those people who are phone prone. You message them with a question and receive a call me in return. Sometimes it can feel a little annoying, you just emailed me back, you could have answered my question there! But the truth is, you probably rarely end those phone calls wishing that person would have just replied in the email instead.
There’s something more that we get out of real phone conversations than we can get through texts or emails: emotion and a sense of personal connection! Plus, a quick phone call takes so much less time than emailing back and forth.
Finding the middle ground.
In this digital age, where we’re all so addicted to our smartphones, we can still find a middle ground! We can find a place between mindless use of technology and completely giving it up. We can still make technology work for us instead of against us.
Check out what happened when one person put this to the test. Find out what happens when you reply call me to every email. Read the experiment here.
And if you need more help learning to be more mindful of your smartphone usage, check out this little trick: 5 questions to ask before reaching for your phone.
