Recently, the Atlantic ran an article discussing a study which ran from 2005-2019 where the researchers put a recording device around participants and tracked how many words they spoke each day. Researchers discovered a drop in spoken words from an average of 16,632 in 2005 to 11,900 in 2019. That’s around a 28% drop. What explains the drop? As you can guess, the article suggests it’s our phones! We’re texting and using apps to offload our conversations and interactions so that we don’t have to speak to one another face-to-face. The author of the article, Olga Khazan, uses the example of ordering her Starbucks coffee online as an example. There’s no need to interact with humans!
Relatedly, we’re statistically spending more time alone. I don’t know about you, but when I spend a good length of time on my computer or phone or even reading a book, without speaking to anyone, it feels difficult to speak. It’s almost as if I have to relearn how to speak. My voice cracks, I stumble over words, and I struggle to think of something to say.
Why does this matter? Well, I think it’s helpful to think through for a number of reasons.
First, I think it might help explain the general complaint we hear that people today are phone-call phobic. People would rather text than call a friend. It almost feels insulting to call someone on the phone. How dare you intrude like that? I find myself preferring text messages over phone conversations because of habit, even though I grew up in the 80s and 90s and spent hours and hours in the 90s as a teen on the phone with friends. The technology has malformed me.
Second, I think it might help explain why many young people (especially men) struggle with taking the initiative on romantic relationships. Last year I referred to our culture’s struggle to speak and its relation to the loneliness crisis as the “Prufrock Problem” and argued for the virtue of courage as a response. I still think that’s right. Think about it this way: if you don’t practice speaking in person to other people, how are you going to ask someone out on a date? How are you going to tell someone that you are romantically interested in them? Or will you, like Prufrock, give up and walk lonely on the beach? Learning how to speak matters.
Third, I worry about our churches. We are called to be warm, loving, welcoming people, people who greet others with hugs and kisses! But we’ve all decided we’re introverts and we don’t have to talk to others, we don’t have to pass the peace. It makes us uncomfortable to greet strangers, to talk about our week. We want to walk into church in a bubble, worship, and walk out. Only that’s not how God designed us. We are embodied and we are called to embodied worship, to looking each other in the eye and talking to one another, to praying for one another, to singing encouragement to one another, to breaking bread with one another. Well, if we are out of practice speaking, then it makes sense that it’s hard to talk on Sunday morning.
Fourth, the relationships we do have can grow anemic. We can develop the bad habit of turning to texting to communicate important ideas instead of calling someone or (preferably) talking to them in person. And in the process, we lose more of our ability to empathize and speak.
In T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, there is a painful section titled “A Game of Chess” where a married couple sit miserably together and waste the night. The wife nags at the husband to speak, but he sits silently. She says,
Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
I never know what you are thinking. Think.’
But he only thinks to himself.
I fear that this scene has been repeated many times, among friends and couples, only now one or more parties divert themselves with screens. But still there is no speaking.
As the World grows more and more mediated, Christianity will have something meaningful to offer as an alternative. It will have embodied presence. And people will come to us looking for that. But we must act on our embodiment. We must show up and speak, speak words of Good News to people in desperate need. We must look people in the eye. We must have courage to speak to them. It is a serious thing to use our words, to communicate to another person in person out of love. Cherish your words. Guard them. Shepherd them. Do not let them dissipate for the sake of efficiency. You will have lost more than you know.