In a world where people spend less time staring into the eyes of another human to converse and spend more time allowing their phone to do their bidding by communicating through the internet, instant messaging apps and text messaging, it’s no wonder society has developed an obsession with their phones. More importantly, it’s no wonder society has developed a pseudo form of etiquette. This weird unspoken rule of formality resulted in a Fear of Texting First. The stress of a potentially cataclysmic awkward event is enough to have anyone jump when their phone suddenly vibrates from the depths of a pocket.
Getting Alerted of Your Fear of Texting First
The idea of a standard amount of time between the first introduction to when the start of the next conversation can begin is frightening. Not knowing whether you are in the right or should continue to wait is the core of having a Fear of Texting First. Who determines the length of time and who enforces it? If there is a governing board of texting adjudicators rigorously policing this type of behaviour across society? If so what do their uniforms look like? Could they be the people dressed up as oversized cellphones outside of low-budget tech stores? Yes.
Imagine being on one of those “no, YOU hang up!” phone calls in the middle of the night and then hearing a knock on your bedroom door. Confused, you get out of bed and slowly make your way to the door, turning the handle unsure of what will be on the other side. Suddenly you are standing face-to-buttons with a giant phone mascot, holding a large USB dongle, and just says “time to power down”. Did I just write the greatest TV series plot ever created? Patent-pending.
Let’s say you’re on a date with some catfish you met online who seems like a real winner. The evening is going really well. He takes you to dinner and lets you pay half the bill. He drives you around whilst obeying basic traffic laws and ultimately drops you off at home at a reasonable hour. Perfection. You go inside the house, sprint to the window, carefully move the curtains so he can’t see you staring at him and you can see his eyes are glued to his phone. He’s swiping right but you aren’t getting any notifications. Riddle me this: Do you text first?
Dialling Back Your Fear of Texting First
When it comes to the great debate of whether you should text first, there really is no right answer. If you want to have a conversation with someone because something unbelievably timely has happened and you don’t have a large enough Instagram following to share it with, just text the person. Do you really think people today are so shallow they would break-up with you because you sent a text message too quickly? (Don’t answer that).
There shouldn’t be a standard amount of time between when two conversations take place. If you enjoy speaking with another person, do it! If you find yourself staring at your phone for hours at a time while you wait for it to light up with a message, just imagine the person you are trying to speak with is doing the exact same thing with their own phone. It’s like if you have stage fright you should picture the audience in their underwear. Is that applicable? I think we all know how effective that is. If you are in the same room as each other, you could always just…I don’t know…have a real conversation? Maybe that’s scarier than having a Fear of Texting First though.