Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

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Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by Tortoise » Tue Jul 07, 2020 2:05 pm

Over the past few years, I've noticed that most of my friends and family have almost completely stopped using email and phone calls as forms of communication and have replaced them both with texting. I knew that younger people have basically grown up on texting and were never really big on email or phone calls to begin with, but it's been surprising for me to see older people (middle-aged to 70+) adopt the trend as well.

I understand the utility and convenience of texting, and I use it all the time. But I also find email to be useful in some situations, and I think the two forms of communication are ideally suited for different purposes.

In a nutshell, I think texting is ideally suited for quick, short FYI-type information and the sharing of content (videos, articles, etc.) that can be consumed relatively quickly by the recipient. By contrast, I think emails are ideally suited for longer exchanges and the sharing of content that will take the recipient much longer (say, more than 10 minutes) to consume. And if a lot of back-and-forth is likely required, neither texting nor email is ideal; in that case, a phone call probably makes the most sense.

I used to think that was just common sense. But I now have friends and family sending me long, email-length text messages (often broken up into multiple successive messages) and links to videos that are well over 10 or 20 minutes in length, and it really kind of baffles me why they don't just send an email instead.

Here's the thing: A text message carries a sort of implied obligation of immediacy that an email doesn't. They are both forms of asynchronous communication, but whereas it's common for a person to wait up to a few days (or more) before reading or replying to an email, it seems generally expected that a person will respond to a text message within seconds or minutes -- maybe within a few hours worst-case if the recipient is very busy.

So it seems a bit ridiculous to text someone a super-long message with questions, or a link to a 1-hour video or long-form article that takes a long time to read. Am I unusual in thinking that it's a bit silly for everyone to be texting everything nowadays instead of sensibly choosing between texts, emails, or phone calls based on the length and interactivity of the message?

Do I just need to get with the times and stop telling these kids to get off my lawn?
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Re: Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by Mountaineer » Tue Jul 07, 2020 2:53 pm

Tortoise wrote:
Tue Jul 07, 2020 2:05 pm
Over the past few years, I've noticed that most of my friends and family have almost completely stopped using email and phone calls as forms of communication and have replaced them both with texting. I knew that younger people have basically grown up on texting and were never really big on email or phone calls to begin with, but it's been surprising for me to see older people (middle-aged to 70+) adopt the trend as well.

I understand the utility and convenience of texting, and I use it all the time. But I also find email to be useful in some situations, and I think the two forms of communication are ideally suited for different purposes.

In a nutshell, I think texting is ideally suited for quick, short FYI-type information and the sharing of content (videos, articles, etc.) that can be consumed relatively quickly by the recipient. By contrast, I think emails are ideally suited for longer exchanges and the sharing of content that will take the recipient much longer (say, more than 10 minutes) to consume. And if a lot of back-and-forth is likely required, neither texting nor email is ideal; in that case, a phone call probably makes the most sense.

I used to think that was just common sense. But I now have friends and family sending me long, email-length text messages (often broken up into multiple successive messages) and links to videos that are well over 10 or 20 minutes in length, and it really kind of baffles me why they don't just send an email instead.

Here's the thing: A text message carries a sort of implied obligation of immediacy that an email doesn't. They are both forms of asynchronous communication, but whereas it's common for a person to wait up to a few days (or more) before reading or replying to an email, it seems generally expected that a person will respond to a text message within seconds or minutes -- maybe within a few hours worst-case if the recipient is very busy.

So it seems a bit ridiculous to text someone a super-long message with questions, or a link to a 1-hour video or long-form article that takes a long time to read. Am I unusual in thinking that it's a bit silly for everyone to be texting everything nowadays instead of sensibly choosing between texts, emails, or phone calls based on the length and interactivity of the message?

Do I just need to get with the times and stop telling these kids to get off my lawn?
My thoughts as well. 8)
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Re: Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by Maddy » Tue Jul 07, 2020 4:57 pm

During most of my professional life, people actually wrote letters. It was only during the final few years that e-mail had become popular, and even then it was resisted by many of us in the legal world because it was both insecure and unreliable. Entire cases could be dismissed, or orders of default vacated, based upon an e-mail that ended up in a "junk" folder or that was claimed to have never arrived. And filing all those e-mails, which typically grew into unwieldly threads, was an ongoing nightmare. I never could figure out a system of doing that while maintaining the context of the communication and without duplicating the entire thread each time a new message came through.

The worst part was that clients insisted upon the ability to use e-mail, which entailed the expectation that their message would be seen and responded to immediately--as if you were just sitting there at the computer waiting for their latest thought. Unfortunately, those thoughts typically would come in random, half-baked fashion, always one per e-mail. That never happened when people had to actually sit down and compose a letter. The latter required them to actually put together a coherent sequence of thoughts--something that virtually disappeared with the free-associating, stream-of-consciousness-type communications that became the standard for computer-based communication.

I've never in my life "texted," and I'm quite sure I don't own whatever device you do it with. However, what I've gleaned from my contacts with young people and from my occasional encounters with internet forums such as Twitter, this technology has caused language skills to go by the wayside--not to mention its role in discouraging thoughts of any complexity. In my more conspiracy-minded moments, I think it's a plot to dumb down the population by getting them used to thinking in the smallest, most simplistic chunks possible.
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Re: Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by pp4me » Tue Jul 07, 2020 5:17 pm

I have always hated talking on the phone so I'm one of those 70+ people who prefer texting. I even keep my phone on Do Not Disturb so it goes directly to voice mail. This is because 90% of the time it is a marketing/robo-call and if it's not it's probably one of my kids calling for some reason other than just wanting to talk to their Dad. Rather than texting however, my kids contact me on Facebook Messenger which is pretty much the same thing as far as I can tell.
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Re: Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by vnatale » Tue Jul 07, 2020 7:28 pm

Tortoise wrote:
Tue Jul 07, 2020 2:05 pm
Over the past few years, I've noticed that most of my friends and family have almost completely stopped using email and phone calls as forms of communication and have replaced them both with texting. I knew that younger people have basically grown up on texting and were never really big on email or phone calls to begin with, but it's been surprising for me to see older people (middle-aged to 70+) adopt the trend as well.

I understand the utility and convenience of texting, and I use it all the time. But I also find email to be useful in some situations, and I think the two forms of communication are ideally suited for different purposes.

In a nutshell, I think texting is ideally suited for quick, short FYI-type information and the sharing of content (videos, articles, etc.) that can be consumed relatively quickly by the recipient. By contrast, I think emails are ideally suited for longer exchanges and the sharing of content that will take the recipient much longer (say, more than 10 minutes) to consume. And if a lot of back-and-forth is likely required, neither texting nor email is ideal; in that case, a phone call probably makes the most sense.

I used to think that was just common sense. But I now have friends and family sending me long, email-length text messages (often broken up into multiple successive messages) and links to videos that are well over 10 or 20 minutes in length, and it really kind of baffles me why they don't just send an email instead.

Here's the thing: A text message carries a sort of implied obligation of immediacy that an email doesn't. They are both forms of asynchronous communication, but whereas it's common for a person to wait up to a few days (or more) before reading or replying to an email, it seems generally expected that a person will respond to a text message within seconds or minutes -- maybe within a few hours worst-case if the recipient is very busy.

So it seems a bit ridiculous to text someone a super-long message with questions, or a link to a 1-hour video or long-form article that takes a long time to read. Am I unusual in thinking that it's a bit silly for everyone to be texting everything nowadays instead of sensibly choosing between texts, emails, or phone calls based on the length and interactivity of the message?

Do I just need to get with the times and stop telling these kids to get off my lawn?
I'm almost 100% email! Today I got an email from a work associate who said he was having a difficult time keeping up with the (at least) 85 emails he'd received from me since July 1st.

I told him that is my preferred mode and it's up to him to respond in kind or make the decision that we have a phone call instead. Last Friday we had a three hour phone meeting.

I am 0% text. I am an extremely fast typist on these computer keyboards and I refuse to type on a phone "keyboard".

I'm also an extremely fast reader - about three times as fast as the average person. So that is the way I want my information coming to me because that is the fastest way I can input information into my brain. I will rarely ever listen to an audio message or watch a video because the average person speaks at 200 words per minute while I read at 900 words too minutes. Way too inefficient as an information in put to me.

I only am listening like now when My eyes are occupied with something else. Finally, I generally have two audio sources on all the time to get into my brain whenever it's not otherwise occupied. To have to listen to someone sending me an audio would require effort to turn off those two other ongoing sound sources.

LONG LIVE EMAIL!

Vinny

Vi
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Re: Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by pp4me » Tue Jul 07, 2020 7:55 pm

vnatale wrote:
Tue Jul 07, 2020 7:28 pm
I am 0% text. I am an extremely fast typist on these computer keyboards and I refuse to type on a phone "keyboard".
I typed 100 WPM in my prime but pop up one of those "keyboards" on a cell phone and OMG! I fat-finger every other letter.

My wife, on the other hand, started using cell phones long before smart phones and the speed with which she could text using just the keys on the phone was amazing. Now that smart phones have come along she's lost the skill but it was truly something to behold at the time.
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Re: Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by Kriegsspiel » Tue Jul 07, 2020 7:59 pm

Typing and using a fingerpad or mouse is so far ahead of any touchscreen, I naturally follow Cal Newport's recommendation to keep even your smartphones mostly dumb. That said, I use swype when I have to write something on a phone. It's much quicker than thumb tapping.
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Re: Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by Tortoise » Tue Jul 07, 2020 8:50 pm

MangoMan wrote:
Tue Jul 07, 2020 2:18 pm
The splitting of messages is a phenomenon of different carriers having limits on characters and is extremely annoying. Almost as bad as the new Apple feature of 'liking' a text which quotes an entire message if you have Android.
It's actually not the splitting of a long message into multiple SMS texts that bothers me; it's the fact that the person sending the long message didn't realize that email would be a more suitable medium for such a long message. Different tools are good for different jobs, and someone sending everything via text reminds me of the old saying, "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
Maddy wrote:
Tue Jul 07, 2020 4:57 pm
During most of my professional life, people actually wrote letters.
[...]
[Sitting down and composing a letter] required [clients] to actually put together a coherent sequence of thoughts--something that virtually disappeared with the free-associating, train-of-thought-type communications that became the standard for computer-based communication.
That's a really good point. It's still possible to write emails that are just as thoughtfully worded as physical letters, but it requires the writer to voluntarily put forth the effort -- whereas before email, people had no choice but to put forth that effort if they wanted to communicate in writing.

In a similar way, I miss the old Internet where most people shared ideas by blogging instead of using social media. The longer format of blogs motivated people to organize their thoughts much more coherently.

I've sometimes wondered, if an online discussion forum were to limit each member to a maximum of one or two posts per day, would the average quality of discussion on that forum increase noticeably? I suspect it would.
pp4me wrote:
Tue Jul 07, 2020 5:17 pm
I have always hated talking on the phone so I'm one of those 70+ people who prefer texting.
I can relate. I've never been a big fan of talking on the phone since it's real-time and doesn't give me much of a chance to organize my thoughts and responses before speaking.
vnatale wrote:
Tue Jul 07, 2020 7:28 pm
I'm almost 100% email! Today I got an email from a work associate who said he was having a difficult time keeping up with the (at least) 85 emails he'd received from me since July 1st.
Why does that not surprise me? ;D
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Re: Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by Xan » Tue Jul 07, 2020 10:32 pm

Tortoise wrote:
Tue Jul 07, 2020 8:50 pm
I've sometimes wondered, if an online discussion forum were to limit each member to a maximum of one or two posts per day, would the average quality of discussion on that forum increase noticeably? I suspect it would.
That's an interesting idea and one that would potentially could be experimented with. It might also help us all to spend less time here checking. :-)
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Re: Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by flyingpylon » Wed Jul 08, 2020 5:21 am

Tortoise wrote:
Tue Jul 07, 2020 8:50 pm
In a similar way, I miss the old Internet where most people shared ideas by blogging instead of using social media. The longer format of blogs motivated people to organize their thoughts much more coherently.

I've sometimes wondered, if an online discussion forum were to limit each member to a maximum of one or two posts per day, would the average quality of discussion on that forum increase noticeably? I suspect it would.
IMO, the height of the Internet was just prior to the onslaught of social media, when blogs ruled the world and a little bit of effort was required to share information.

If we have to have “social media”, I would like to see a service that only allows people to share original content they created themselves. It would cut down on a lot of the garbage that gets shared and limit the reach of ridiculous or extremist ideas.

I was never a texter until my kids got smartphones. You have to communicate with people using the medium they prefer if you actually want them to interact with you.

As an “email person” I tend to put a lot of thought and effort into my work communications but I know darn well that a lot of the details go unread. Depending on the situation I typically have to spend time refining and simplifying things before hitting “send” or sometimes not even hitting send at all.
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Re: Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by Kriegsspiel » Wed Jul 08, 2020 6:16 am

I remember trying to get people to just email me instead of texting me back when I was on a smartphone with limited texts and no data (I could just connect to ever-present WIFI and check emails, kind of a proto Republic Wireless concept). For some reason, telling them that they can write an email on their phone just like a text wasn't a slam dunk ;D
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Re: Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by vnatale » Wed Jul 08, 2020 9:49 pm

I finally broke down and bought a cell phone and activated it, slightly over two years ago - June 2018. I'd bought cell phones prior but never activated them. Only used them as portable internet devices.

This is a Moto G6 (Motorola) $200 that was one of the phone that would would work with Google FI. In rural area where I am cell phone coverage can be spotty so I wanted something that could make phone calls over WiFi. Good decision on my part.

But I continued to use this phone as strictly a portable internet device. I don't think I used it to make my first phone call until 1 1/2 years later, this past January.

Tonight I needed to receive a text so I pulled out the manual to see what app does that. Activated it.

Decided to try it out by sending a text to a coworker who oftentimes never sees my emails in a timely manner and is always telling me to send her a text if it is important.

Here is my text (first ever on this phone) to her:

"....you are always telling me to text you. Have owned this phone for over two years and this is my first text ever on it. Extremely painful to type using only one finger with one half the time the wrong letter appearing. Are you receiving this? This may be both the start and finish of my texting career!

"Email reigns!

"This even way worse than I always dreaded it would be. This is PURE torture! Signing off for maybe forever!"


I wanted to add one more text to say: "In the time it took me to type all the above via text I could have typed in an email the entire War and Peace book!"

What a horrendous experience!

Vinny
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by Mountaineer » Thu Jul 09, 2020 6:12 am

vnatale wrote:
Wed Jul 08, 2020 9:49 pm
I finally broke down and bought a cell phone and activated it, slightly over two years ago - June 2018. I'd bought cell phones prior but never activated them. Only used them as portable internet devices.

This is a Moto G6 (Motorola) $200 that was one of the phone that would would work with Google FI. In rural area where I am cell phone coverage can be spotty so I wanted something that could make phone calls over WiFi. Good decision on my part.

But I continued to use this phone as strictly a portable internet device. I don't think I used it to make my first phone call until 1 1/2 years later, this past January.

Tonight I needed to receive a text so I pulled out the manual to see what app does that. Activated it.

Decided to try it out by sending a text to a coworker who oftentimes never sees my emails in a timely manner and is always telling me to send her a text if it is important.

Here is my text (first ever on this phone) to her:

"....you are always telling me to text you. Have owned this phone for over two years and this is my first text ever on it. Extremely painful to type using only one finger with one half the time the wrong letter appearing. Are you receiving this? This may be both the start and finish of my texting career!

"Email reigns!

"This even way worse than I always dreaded it would be. This is PURE torture! Signing off for maybe forever!"


I wanted to add one more text to say: "In the time it took me to type all the above via text I could have typed in an email the entire War and Peace book!"

What a horrendous experience!

Vinny
Try dictating your text. Much easier if more than a couple of words to send. My iPhone enables dictation, not sure about other phone operating systems.
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Re: Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by vnatale » Thu Jul 09, 2020 8:59 am

Mountaineer wrote:
Thu Jul 09, 2020 6:12 am
vnatale wrote:
Wed Jul 08, 2020 9:49 pm
I finally broke down and bought a cell phone and activated it, slightly over two years ago - June 2018. I'd bought cell phones prior but never activated them. Only used them as portable internet devices.

This is a Moto G6 (Motorola) $200 that was one of the phone that would would work with Google FI. In rural area where I am cell phone coverage can be spotty so I wanted something that could make phone calls over WiFi. Good decision on my part.

But I continued to use this phone as strictly a portable internet device. I don't think I used it to make my first phone call until 1 1/2 years later, this past January.

Tonight I needed to receive a text so I pulled out the manual to see what app does that. Activated it.

Decided to try it out by sending a text to a coworker who oftentimes never sees my emails in a timely manner and is always telling me to send her a text if it is important.

Here is my text (first ever on this phone) to her:

"....you are always telling me to text you. Have owned this phone for over two years and this is my first text ever on it. Extremely painful to type using only one finger with one half the time the wrong letter appearing. Are you receiving this? This may be both the start and finish of my texting career!

"Email reigns!

"This even way worse than I always dreaded it would be. This is PURE torture! Signing off for maybe forever!"


I wanted to add one more text to say: "In the time it took me to type all the above via text I could have typed in an email the entire War and Peace book!"

What a horrendous experience!

Vinny
Try dictating your text. Much easier if more than a couple of words to send. My iPhone enables dictation, not sure about other phone operating systems.
I'm sure it does. However, I always (like now) have two sound sources going on at the same time (one - C-Span, the other - Sports Talk radio). Therefore there'd be the annoyance factor of having to first turn both off while doing the dictation and then turning them both on again. Yes, not more than a few seconds work in each case but still annoying. On the other hand this and email never require me doing either of those.

I'll just continue to communicate to people to NOT call me or text me because, in general, my phone is going to be turned off. If you need to communicate with me send me an email.

I realize that I may be different from the general population in this (but probably not as much so within this group).

Yesterday I called my office phone to check on messages. I've been out of the office for nearly four months and this was the first time I was doing so.

I had 8 messages. Six of them were from April, from the same woman trying to sell me Accounts Receivable collection services with the other two being from June with another woman trying to sell me payroll services.

That was it for nearly four months!

ZERO true work related calls.

I've well trained all my work contacts that email is how we communicate. I also provide them with my personal email so one way or the other I'm either going to see messages via my work email address or my personal email address.

Vinny
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Re: Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by dualstow » Sun Jul 12, 2020 1:38 pm

Tortoise, i think about this all the time.

• I agree on the sense of immediacy. There’s someone I use both email and texting (Signal app) with, and even though we have explicitly agreed that Signal should not signify the need for an urgent response, the feeling is sometimes there.

• Sending a long “email length” piece by text. Yeah, that’s weird and ungainly. Email was made for that.

• Texting a link to a long video: not so bad! I used to text back, “Thanks, i’ll take a look later.” Now i don’t even do that.

I do find messaging apps convenient because sometimes i don’t want my content stored by nosy Google/Gmail. I confess to using Telegram and Signal even for non-immediate communication.
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Re: Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by Tortoise » Sun Jul 12, 2020 3:43 pm

Good points, dualstow.

In recent months, my brother and I have been texting each other much more, so one of the main reasons I don’t like him to text me links to long videos is because if I don’t watch the video immediately, it gets buried in an avalanche of subsequent texts and is a pain to look up later. By contrast, it’s much easier to go back and find something in my email inbox, especially if it’s only a day or two old.

In other words, at least with people who text me a lot, I view texts as a sort of transient, immediate communication stream to be consumed quickly and then discarded, generally not to be kept for searching through later.
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Re: Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by dualstow » Sun Jul 12, 2020 4:03 pm

There's an easy fix for that. Copy the link to a txt file or an email to yourself. You can have one file or email thread called "Crap my brother sent me" or a separate file/email with a specific title relative to the link. Or an even more general file: "crap people send me."

The only downside is that once you do that, it gets easier to paste the link than to actually watch. Kind of like making lists instead of performing the tasks on those lists. O0
When it comes to watching video clips, falling behind is not necessarily a bad thing.

I often Telegram stuff to myself and hope to eventually put it in an organized file like that described above or to view it or read it.

The above is all with regard to your comment, "it's a pain to look up later."
This stuff will be buried in an avalanche whether you paste it or not. But it *will* be easier to find than scrolling through your phone screen.
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Re: Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by WiseOne » Sun Jul 12, 2020 5:41 pm

It'll be interesting to see how all this plays out. One thing that's definitely changed and I think for the better: unplanned phone calls are now considered rude. You're supposed to text first to make sure the person is free to talk. This is not unlike the 1970s when answering machines were introduced. I remember many people were nervous about leaving voice messages. That took getting used to.

Also FYI, both texting and email are for us old fogies. Ditto Facebook. The high school and college age kids now use Snapchat or Instagram.
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Re: Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by vnatale » Sun Jul 12, 2020 7:59 pm

WiseOne wrote:
Sun Jul 12, 2020 5:41 pm
It'll be interesting to see how all this plays out. One thing that's definitely changed and I think for the better: unplanned phone calls are now considered rude. You're supposed to text first to make sure the person is free to talk. This is not unlike the 1970s when answering machines were introduced. I remember many people were nervous about leaving voice messages. That took getting used to.

Also FYI, both texting and email are for us old fogies. Ditto Facebook. The high school and college age kids now use Snapchat or Instagram.
Are Snapchat and Instagram of creating polls, groups, multi-person communications?

We use Facebook for all of those - for our basketball group and softball team communications. And every music group has a Facebook page. No matter what age the group members.

Vinny
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Re: Texts vs. Emails vs. Phone Calls

Post by dualstow » Mon Jul 13, 2020 12:29 pm

Contractors always want to talk so that they can be hands free and I make every effort to not pick up. O0 Can’t hear them, have no idea how to answer their questions, let alone on the fly. I take a message and then look it up...
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