consider this: less talk, more text.
or, how I learned to stop worrying and love texting back
hello you! welcome to the second installment of ‘consider this’, a series to question culture, social media, and concepts that continually perplex me. these essays are simply food for thought, and food tastes better shared—i invite you to ruminate in the comments with me, ideally over a hot (or cold!) coffee!
if you like what you read today, consider pledging or sharing coffee w/ constanze with someone you love ♥️
I juggled a dozen pen pals in high school. I’d write four of them consistently: two Germans, a Slovenian named Gaja, and a Brooklynite named Satchel. Evie, the first German girl, put Polaroids of her little white dog in each letter and once sent a packet of dried flowers with ‘Summer in Germany,’ written on it in marker.
The second, Amy from Frankfurt, taught me German almost single-handedly over two years of friendship. We swapped snail mail and voice memos, where she’d patiently critique my pronunciation via WhatsApp.
If and when German speakers compliment my accent nowadays, I credit a thoughtful girl I haven’t spoken to in years.
Our letters and texting eventually slowed to a stop. Instagram remained the single tether between us, the digital equivalent of sitting a few tables apart in a busy high school cafeteria. Maybe I’d catch her looking at me, maybe she’d wave—I’d look at her story, and she might react to mine with a heart or a laughing-crying emoji.
We rarely, if ever, talked.
Deleting Instagram in 2022 dissolved my peripheral connections in an instant—friends I’d made while solo-traveling, coworkers from jobs I worked ten years ago, old high school friends and old pen pals alike—all evaporated in less than a minute. No posts kept my name subtly present in the back of their minds. If I wanted to share a meme, picture, or check up on someone, texting was my only quick and easy option.
Suddenly, texting became more necessary than ever.
I couldn’t stand it.
I used to die on the hill of texting etiquette being made up and stupid. Human beings aren’t meant to be constantly available. Texting keeps us from being in the moment. It isn’t even talking, anyway! We should all take our sweet time replying.
Taking my sweet time looks like an embarrassing cycle of apology tours, sending out dozens of “So sorry I didn’t see this!” and “Sorry, I’ve been so busy!” texts every couple weeks. Whether I actually saw a text or missed it, Sorry! is always part of the reply.
Because I am always sorry, but that doesn’t mean I change.
My creeping guilt, combined with the mellow pain of waiting long periods of time to be responded to (my just desserts), finally made me reconsider my relationship to texting. It matters more than I, and likely other people, want to give it credit for.
In the comments, let me know if you agree with the following:
Texting is simply part of being alive right now.
We’ve passed from the necessity of letters, telegrams, and landlines. We still call, but texting is decidedly our form of communication besides email, FaceTime, and… whatever young Zoomers like to use.
I’ll probably never like this reality, but I’ve at least come to terms with it now. I sought out pen pals (and wrote friends, too) early on because texting felt so cold and sterile in comparison to letters.
But if my goal is to be earnest and loving in what I write, a text can be just as meaningful as a letter. My good friend Cecelia, a cultural anthropologist studying in Stockholm, considers texts to be cultural artifacts in and of themselves. With how significant a role texts play in our day-to-day lives, they might as well be.
That, and I admit it:
In historical context, texting is super convenient.
Most of human history would be envious of us, getting to read loved ones’ struggles and blessings daily—first-hand, hot off the presses. No need to wait by the phone. No letter to read and reply to; no hunting for ink, paper, or stamps. We simply tap letters on a screen with our thumbs, and a response shows up on the same screen just minutes, even seconds afterwards.
I counted the little things in my hunt for technological gratitude:
I love getting assurance of someone’s safety within minutes.
Long-distance relationships probably sucked way more than they already do when you couldn’t exchange I love you’s before sleeping, 5k miles apart.
I couldn’t swing snail mail at this point in my life. I love not having to write to multiple people at once just to trade life updates.
It’s easy to take for granted that I can hear my dad laugh in a voice note, that I can text a friend just minutes before a job interview and give them encouragement right when they need it most.
But distance is difficult no matter what. I wish I could’ve prepared myself for the exquisite pain of separation from the people I love—before studying abroad, before dating long distance, and before planting myself 3,000 miles away from close family. It’s clearer to me than ever before:
Texting can’t do it all, but it does enough.
If 2020-2021 taught us anything, it’s that we need the presence of human beings, especially loved ones, to stay normal. All forms of long-distance communication are insufficient because physical presence is so vital.
Despite its clear limitations (I’ve misinterpreted maybe 2,000 texts in my life), texting feeds relationships in small yet consistent ways. That’s another modern privilege—how many distant friendships of old faded away because one party, or both, couldn’t find time to write?
If we’re concerned with societal loneliness and isolation as much as we claim to be, we have to start doing the little things. The tiny things. Text someone to say goodnight or good morning once in a while. Text someone to make summer plans you can both look forward to.
Oftentimes, it’s not so much about the content as it is about the gesture. Reaching out has never been easier, and a quick text could matter to someone far more than we know.
But texting’s not enough, you might say. I’d agree with you—of course it isn’t. Words alone aren’t enough, and while presence is key…
Relationships require effort of all kinds.
Love needs deliberate effort to survive. It needs lots of effort to truly thrive. Keeping a relationship going is especially cumbersome if we prefer to keep all our time for ourselves.
Responding to texts can be tedious. It can be time-consuming. But our lives don’t belong entirely to us. Our time is never solely ours, and it shouldn’t be if we want to spend it properly. Interruptions, the needs of others, and their concerns should have a chief place. Social media, by the nature of how it thrives, mutes this fact.
There’s a reason people turn to dumb phones: texting is one of the few things it can do. It cuts through the funhouses, the town squares, and the alluring boutiques of social media that steal attention from our ‘real lives.’
It occurred to me over Christmas that relationships are our real life. It’s Biblical, cultural, and truly fulfilling to love others like we love ourselves—but it’s difficult to focus on relationship development when a personally tailored world of desire, pleasure, and dominance fits so neatly in the palm of our hand.
How can we focus on others when advertisers and algorithms profit directly from our constant self-interest? How could the grounding effect of texting others about our real lives ever compete with online escapism?
Other people make our lives real. Dedicating ourselves to maintaining regular, frequent communication via text or call, even when it’s inconvenient, will change the world—at least our personal worlds, first.
Quick but necessary caveat: we can’t be available 24/7, no breaks. It’s not possible, healthy, or realistic. But I realized too late… No one’s asking that of us.
Past me saw things in extremes: Texting is hard. What, am I supposed to be constantly online, all the time, nonstop? Come on!
I owe it to those I love to be consistent, not perfect. Striking a balance was never as hard as I thought it’d be, though it does take extra time and effort.
Something else I was unaware of: it’s totally worth it.
Tips from a newly-reformed Bad Texter:
Give yourself a realistic window for responding. Everyone by the end of the day? Certain people within a few hours, and others within a day or so? Sure. Whatever window you set, keep it consistent.
Set a standard. Let everyone know that you won’t get back to them immediately, but sometime soon. This is not a get out of jail free card, I’ve tried—just be honest, and stick to reply as soon as you’re able.
You will feel better responding to most texts earlier than later. Putting off texting is a form of procrastination. Don’t let it get out of hand!
Texting back is sort of like gardening. We want a sprawling garden of fruitful, happy relationships—we just need to work on our green thumbs.
At least for me, I’ll be busy planting. Practice makes perfect!
w/ love,
Constanze
The best thing about smartwatches is that I can leave my phone in the other room, but still know to go reply when someone texts me <3. One of the few things I get notifications for.
I adore the way you reframed this, Constanze! How lucky are we to be able to text?!