To think in 20 years we won't do it any more?

I agree rtexting is very useful. I just wish I found it easier to do.

Texting does have its uses. The person who cleans for me has such a strong Scottish accent that I find them difficult to understand on the phone so we tend to just text. Still I much prefer email.

I am another who cannot get on with a tiny screen. I have numb fingertips on my right hand and I have dyspraxia, which means, as anyone who reads my posts on GN knows that my fingers do not do what my brain tells them to do and 123, even if I say it as I type will be entered as 312.

biglouis I find texting a very akward and restricting way to communicate. Typing on that weeny little screen when I have a whole tribe of computers with perfectly good keyboards.

I don't have a mobile, but I see my daughters text, indeed it looks so difficult and restricting. I love my computer, can do any task.

Ive always enjoyed talking on the phone. I can ring someone, get another person (because the object of my call is out) and still be talking 20 minutes later!

My grandmother used to say I was "vaccinated with a gramophone needle" although most people nowadays would not know what that meant.

During the first lockdown I wanted to contribute something to the community so I volunteered to speak to some "phone friends" regularly each week. Some conversations were brief - just to check in case they needed anything. Others I got to know quite well and we discussed a range of subjects.

I find texting a very akward and restricting way to communicate. Typing on that weeny little screen when I have a whole tribe of computers with perfectly good keyboards.

Twenty years from now the world will belong to those who are fluent and good communicators. It always has and always will.

Perhaps more parents should relise that, and start talking themselves and make their children communicate face to face using their mouths as well.

Shopping with my granddaughter at the weekend, we were looking for a shop she wanted to go into. But despite wandering around for ages failed to find it.
I said I’d go and ask someone, she seemed horrified by this suggestion, and insist we google it, and follow online instructions.
It was a good idea, but what was strange was her horror of us interacting with a stranger, when it seemed the obvious answer to me.

It used to be considered extremely rude to use your phone when out in restaurants or at a meal with friends. That idea seems to have gone out the window,now. Anything goes. I still think it is rude.

When I have my family to dinner …not often , I tell them “ no mobiles at table, if you can’t leave it alone …you dont eat! “
Also my daughter twlks her two kids 15 and 11 leave all devices downstairs when they go to bed….they’ve been doing g it since they first had devices at age ten …they’re now used to it, and leave them on charge , downstairs , without being asked! I’m impressed. And to add they don’t even have a tv… as it’s total rubbish . A lot of talking to each other goes on in her house . You just have to lay the ground rules at an early age!

Bravissimo Nanadana

I do not have a mobile phone. My landline phone will not do text. So if people want to speak to me they phone. Except for my sister who emails me.
I have had young people ask how I contact people, they are amazed that I can live and survive without a mobile phone. I spent the first 30 years of my life with no phone of any kind.

That’s brilliant NanaDana. And very true.

It's hortible to see. Daily I see adults out with a baby sitting in a pushchair being totally ignored whilst the adult is reading or doing whatever on the phone. Even folk out with a dog have their phones in front of them just trailing along with the dog. The worst I witnessed was in a playcentre. Two adults sitting at a table, two children kept running back to the table excited to tell the adults about what ever they had been doing and the adults never raised their head to look at the children never mind speak. I didn't see their lips move once. The two children just stood then ran off. Felt so sorry or the two wee girls.

I remember the days when few people owned phones and wrote letters.
I haven’t got a mobile phone and rarely use my landline. I have a few friends left and we do have long telephone conversations.
I use messenger a lot.

Any form of communication is better than none. I do chat to people on my walk and neighbours.
I am glad that my ACs text or phone me regularly and I still have long telephone conversations with my sister and friends but not as regularly.
I don't think conversation is dying out. If you heard my GCs in animated chat with their friends you would see that conversation is alive and kicking!

It will be much sooner than 20 years I think. Another sad sign of the times really, the trend not to talk and chat face to face. People seem to be scared of it cos they lose control of a 'conversation' I guess.

DH doesn’t do texting so if he has his phone on silent it can be difficult to tell him something urgent when he’s out. We have family WhatsApp groups though and he seems to like those.

This is all too much. I phone my two sisters once a week and meet up with a coffee group once a week. I also volunteer for the NT. We get lots of people every week from every walk of life and they are all ready to chat. I must admit my daughter doesn't phone and we send emails. My son who is younger loves to come and see us and we have lively debates on different topics.

And perish the thought that you might pop round to see someone, just on the off-chance!!
Like we used to do.
And we live in an age of so-called progress. I think not.
If this texting malarkey in order to have a phone conversation is the new order then I am not joining it!
If a phone call is inconvenient then say so.
Whatever is the matter with people?

Well, what people do or do not do in twenty years time, may very well turn out not to be my concern, as I am 71 now.

I have always disliked phoning people and greatly prefer e-mailing where I can type using all my fingers on both hands, and select a font that is large enough to enable me to see it readily - both difficult to do on a so-called smart phone.

To be honest, I think all this texting is a fad, as is the fact that people are so busy with their online friends as not to have time for seeing others in real life, and that like other fads and fashions, it will die out to some extent again,

Maybe not in our lifetimes though.

Congratulations NanaDana on encapsulating everything I would want to say in a poem!!
HousePlant Queen, I too text to say would you like a chat? There is nothing worse than being in the middle of complex recipe or dying to go to the loo when the phone rings. So text first and await instructions!

I was brought up to understand the telephone was for emergency and quick messages only. I only use the phone for that. I meet friends face to face and chat I also support a large group face to face. The rest of the time I email friends and text my partner (we live apart) when we are apart. I am hard of hearing and do not cope on the landline anyway. Speaker on mobile is fine. It works well for me.

I have profoundly disliked using the phone for as long as I can remember but although very glad to have so many online alternatives (via text in some context or another) I know my standard of conversation has lowered somewhat, all the more so since lockdown(s).

Good thread. It’s certainly something I think about often.

I’ll call my DDs and they call me, there in there late 40s , however GDs I text as they’ve always got phones in there hands. Men in our family much prefer to call and they are all ages. But I do feel it’s a generational thing.

I know this was meant to catch the eye - and it succeeded OP!
My initial reaction was “Too right” !
But more seriously, things we took for granted, landlines, phone calls where nobody can see you are still in your pj’s or just out of the shower ,writing and getting letters and cards, postcards from holidays, people on walks with their dogs actually enjoying the countryside (or talking to the dog), a simple Good Morning when you pass someone you vaguely recognise, thank you’s, “Can I help you” in JL instead of “Y’ll right there?”
Oh dear, I’m turning into my granny.