WILSHERE: A connection beyond cellular

Space may be hailed as the final frontier, but every day millennials venture into unchartered territory. As we use our phones, our laptops, our watch-phones and sometimes our shoe phones, we are journeying into the great unknown, often unaware of the effect technology has on our relationships. There is a new set of unwritten rules, it seems, that come with dating in a hyper-technological era.

These rules are muddled, however, based on who you ask and how frequently they use the different forms of technology. My brother used to firmly stand behind the three-day rule, which states that you should wait three days to hear from the person you like to confirm their feelings. I do not believe in that tactic. Since my dating style has been described as “driven, but brash” and “intimidating,” I choose to communicate mostly without theoretically prescribed time limits. I have yet to track the success rate of this tactic. Some people have sworn by doubling the time it takes the other person to respond. Others swear by their own home remedies, or advice from clippings pulled from teen magazines. All of these practices have led to the same conclusion: none of us really know what we’re doing.

That’s okay.

This is not to say I’m not thankful that we as a society have moved beyond waiting by the rotary phone for our beaus to call. This is to say that we have too quickly raised our expectations for response time and resonance over our chosen channels. We are becoming more available, but that doesn’t mean we’re becoming more open. I already have a set of questions ready to ask myself when the person I’m texting doesn’t respond within the minute I text them. What if they dropped their phone? What if I said something wrong? Is it because I said ‘hey’ instead of ‘hi’? These questions sometimes run through my mind on repeat, until I come up with some placating answer. I know that I would not have lasted in a time where people had to wait weeks for a letter from their beau.

Connecting with someone on as many platforms as possible seems like a good way to get to know another person, but by doing so, we are muddling authentic face-to-face connection. We too quickly pull from the data that we’ve gathered on social media to concoct some substantive connection.  We ask people less about their days because we’ve already seen their tweets. We know what concerts they go to, how they spend their nights, and what Netflix shows they’re binge watching. We think we can learn whatever we want with a few clicks and scrolls. I know I’m guilty of this. It’s still unfathomable to me how quickly we can gather information about each other, and as the rate of progress increases, I continue to be amazed. Sometimes, however, I believe that the ground is being changed too quickly for us to establish a firm stance.

I still believe that no matter how much data we can gather on a person, the best way to get to know them is face to face. There is a lot of merit to making connections in person, one that comes from a different place than behind our phones. We can message all we want, but calculated and grammatically correct responses are not the best bases for relationships. They can be a good starting point, but we have to move beyond that. I love an emoji as much as the next person, but I prefer words to any prayer-hands-shocked-face-surprised-monkey combination I can muster. We must take digital messages less seriously, and cut ourselves and our prospective beaus some slack when they don’t answer our texts immediately.  We’re all just trying to keep it together, and analyzing those four extra minutes is not going to help.  We have to build connections that are stronger than our cellular ones.