Routine acts create unconscious–containing almost no awareness– insincere habits: like wearing a watch everyday or being around one scent, eventually the stimulus, or act, appears to fade.  Our habits influenced by sporadic texting and tweeting have turned into the norm.  We’ve gotten to the point where many parents even neglect to give their children enough attention, which forces kids to compete with technology for attention.   According to a Kaiser Family Foundation study, “young people ages 8 to 18 now spend nearly every waking moment when they are not in school using media — more than 7.5 hours a day.”  Imagine all that could be accomplished in all that time, anything from getting extra sleep (something people complain about not having), to hobbies.

It has also been proven a good number of people prefer digital interactions than face-to-face.  Over-time this has lead to an increase in lessened face-to-face communication which can ultimately, but not necessarily, weaken our social skills.  Many of us know the hesitant, or fearful feeling when you actually have to talk to someone through the phone as opposed to your usual texting.  But, not only does it decrease our willingness to converse directly but it also decreases emotion; we can perfectly well type out “I’m sorry”, “I’m okay”, and “I love you” but typing it isn’t the same as saying it, in typing we can mask our true feelings and the person on the other end can’t know the different. There are no voice inflections or facial expressions to hint at the true intent of the speaker–in this case, texter.

This breaks down all stable foundations of sincerity  and honesty, it leaves us wondering whether or not the person means what they “say”.  We can even become confused or offended in texting conversations because to some people, texting may be equivalent to a regular conversation where no one suddenly stops responding, so when that happens it messes with the sincerity a conversation is supposed to have.  Then, when in real life when people are having a supposedly sincere conversation, occasionally one person will whip out their phone and start texting away at another person, taking away their full attention of the person they are actually with.  The person who texts while with someone else fails to even attempt to see from their perspective, they assume texting is the “norm” and the person won’t be offended. Sometimes people–including me, who has been in this situation many times–who are trying to construct a sincere and meaningful conversation are hurt with a worthless meaningless feeling that the person, who started absently conversing someone else, believe you’re not worth their full attention.  All in all we lose recognition of genuine sincerity and what it means and what it’s worth to give all of ourselves (and all of our time and attention) to another individual: maybe that’s why so many relationships end so frequently or why some relationships fall under the crushing weight of fighting and/or miss-communication.  There is strength in patient, sincere, humility.