The Positive Power of Texting
5 minute read
My reaction to the arrival of a text is pretty similar to my reaction when the alarm goes off on my phone first thing in the morning…surprise and frustration. But I’m an introvert, you see, so both unexpected communication and superficial interactions chip away at my energy levels, depleting my ‘social battery’ a little bit each time. Voice notes, I should add, absolutely horrify me. Whoever invented them has either never met an introvert, or has met one, had a bad experience, and thus decided to take their revenge.
Because I’m reluctant to receive spontaneous texts, I don’t tend to send them, but according to a recent article in The New York Times, a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology confirms that a casual check-in with friends or acquaintances via text can have an enormous impact on their mood and sense of wellbeing. In another study, this time published in The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, it was found that these kinds of positive social interactions are directly linked with a sense of purposefulness in older adults.
Fear of becoming superfluous, redundant (in the broadest sense of the word) is what midlifers fear far more than fine lines and joint pain, because a sense of purpose is one of the defining factors of overall health and longevity as we age.
According to research published in the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America in 2018, social isolation can increase the chances of death by at least 50%, and a lack of human connection was found to be more harmful than even obesity or smoking. Our fear of becoming irrelevant is not unfounded either. There’s a large body of research which shows that an individual’s sense of purpose begins to decline throughout middle adulthood before dropping sharply in late adulthood.
You’d think the wisdom, experience and maturity achieved by our middle years would anchor and steer us confidently through the rest of our lives and make for a richer, fuller existence than ever. But in a (still) youth-obsessed culture, these accomplishments don’t carry the weight that they should. Also, career trajectories remain rooted in the 1950s, when adults had a shorter life span, making retirement a realistic option at 65. They’ve failed to keep pace with the 2022 reality of an older, more able and more intellectually engaged population.
According to Psychology Today: “Sociologists have noted that purposeful roles for older adults are largely lacking in today’s Western societies. Termed ‘the structural lag problem’, the increase in the healthy lifespan of adults has not been equally met by changes in social norms and institutions aimed at channelling ageing adults’ passions, goals, and interests. Today’s ‘purpose’ for older adults is retirement; a domain much less suited for meaningful goals and contributions.” While I don’t agree with raising the retirement age, I believe there should be plenty of exciting and accessible opportunities for a ‘third act’ for those who want it (I wrote a recent article for Heyday on the subject).
Texting might sound like a fairly weak antidote to the epidemic of withdrawal and depression that can strike as we age, but we know that random acts of kindness have a powerful impact on people’s wellbeing, and that’s exactly what sending a text for no reason other than to ask how an individual feels is. The New York Times article calls it “small moments of connection”. That word ‘connection’ has become as much a part of the dominant post-lockdown lexicon as hybrid working and Zoom fatigue. It’s what we lost during Covid, and I think many people of all ages felt a diminished sense of purpose when they were furloughed from their jobs and confined to a 2km radius of their homes.
This has made it far easier to understand an older individual’s perspective. And while conversations around the ‘loneliness paradox’ – whereby tech and social media, which are supposed to make us feel more connected and included, can actually increase a feeling of aloneness – made sense when tech was the only social outlet available to us, a spontaneous ‘How are you doing?’ text has greater warmth and considerateness to it post-pandemic now that everybody is back in their super-busy bubbles. The amount of time it takes, though small, is meaningful when it slices into our 24/7 lifestyles.
But what matters most is the fact that the text requires nothing of the person it’s sent to and expounds nothing of the highs and lows being experienced by the sender.
This is what makes the connection meaningful. The recipient feels valued, seen and heard and this is what differentiates making a ‘real’ connection with someone from simply making contact with them. There’s a giant gulf between the two.
This argument certainly offers a fresh perspective on the topic of texting, which often receives a bad rap, being blamed for everything from ADHD in teens to avoidance coping in adults. The Washington Post interviewed MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle, author of Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, in 2018, and her feeling was that if handled correctly (ie, not used as a substitute for face-to-face conversation), texting can be a positive tool. She advises: “Be thoughtful about who and what you text. Run through your roster of friends and family and consider who might be feeling lonely or confronting a difficult situation. Then shoot them a message.”
Maybe my own issue is less to do with receiving texts per se and more to do with the content of them because how often have I opened a text and seen a message as simple and affecting as ‘How are you doing?’ About as often as I’ve sent one. For now, maybe my purpose should be to embrace texting in the most positive way possible. It’ll add a sense of purposefulness to my here and now, and to my later life, if everything I’ve read is true.
Marie Kelly, July 2022
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