A few months back, I came across a meme where a lady was ranting about how people take ages to respond to a text message. She also stated that if she wanted a late reply, she could have easily delivered her message through a pigeon and this meme got me laughing because I could totally relate to her frustration or at least I could be classified as someone who causes such frustration by ‘some people’.
To divert from context for a bit, if I had my way, I would live in the period where pigeons were used as messengers because receiving messages from pigeons must have been a thrilling experience, especially if such a message was from a loved one. Do not get me wrong, every single day, I'm grateful for the uprise of technology.
However, if I were to pick between calls and text messages, I would say it depends on the urgency of the situation. If the situation is a really urgent one, I wouldn't mind putting out a call or receiving one. But, if the situation isn't an important one and can be discussed via text messages, then please text me.
Now that I've established the fact that I prefer text messages to phone calls, I would like to state that there are a few people who I tag their calls as important every hour of the day and one of such persons is my mother.
I know that a whole lot of people prefer phone calls to text messages because with phone calls, it's easier to read your counterpart's tone but for someone like myself who has mastered the art of reading a person's tone and even countenance from texts, that is not a problem. This leads me to the first reason why I prefer text messages to phone calls;
Control:
Most of the time I am busy doing one activity or another and phone calls could easily disrupt such activities; especially very random calls. This happened to me recently and I got so annoyed with the person at the other end and here is why. I was in the middle of a zoom meeting and out of the blue a young gentleman called me. I cannot tell if it was the phone call that caused the sudden bad network but all of a sudden, I couldn't hear what the speaker was saying anymore. Remember I said I was in the middle of the meeting and as such, the information being shared was getting more important and interesting by extension.
The bad network continued until I left the zoom meeting and answered the call. The call didn't last for up to three minutes because my attention was obviously somewhere else and need I add that I missed out on the information the speaker was disseminating with no means to get it back(Information that I would be asked to put into practise by next month). In such a situation, if I had gotten a little “Is it a good time to call” text message, the whole havoc would have been avoided.
Multitasking:
The story above brings me to my second point–multitasking. A good texter knows how to multitask properly especially while responding to important text messages. More often than not, whenever I'm actively texting a person, I am doing something else on the side and one wouldn't even know because I give as much attention/details to the text messages as needed.
With phone calls however, multitasking is usually minimized because the person at the other end can easily tell that you are doing something else and this can be the cause of some form of dispute,hence, the minimization.
Awkwardness:
Phone calls made with strangers or people who we aren't exactly close to you usually have this cloud of awkwardness hovering somewhere. The conversation may be going so smoothly but in between, the speakers may fall into a few seconds of silence and at this moment both parties are thinking of what to say to keep the conversation flowing. Unnecessary pressure.
With text messages, this awkwardness is totally avoided, at least for me. This is because, if I do not have a response for your text message, I do not beat myself up about it and that may as well be the end of the conversation till the next time.
In conclusion, If I need to contact someone, I would send a quick text message and ensure that the body of the text message contains all the necessary information so that the receiver on the other end knows exactly how important the text message is. However, in an emergency situation, a phone call is just ideal.
Liebe🤍
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