Is the art of conversation dying?

Recently at a family dinner I watched the couple at the end of our table – a niece and her husband in their early 30’s spend most of the time sending and receiving text messages and checking up on their Facebook postings.

You would think that they should have outgrown this fixation with their IPODS by the time they turned 30 or at the very least when they got married?  They may very well have had an argument before they came out and this was the best way to avoid eye contact or conversation? Or maybe joining in the animated and noisy discussion going on around the table was simply not their scene?

I look around my workplace as well and everyone under 40 has something stuck in their ears.  How can they think with a constant stream of music bombarding them?   It also gives me the absolute irritants that I have to stand next to them, wait for them to acknowledge my presence and pull out their ear plugs before I can ask them a question.

Have you been to the movies or a live performance lately and seen the steady stream of young girls going in and out regularly to check their phone messages?  At first I found it incredible that these young people had such weak bladders until I saw they were comparing texts.

It seems that at a gathering, communicating with people who aren’t there is more important than talking to those who are.

I feel blessed to have grown up in an era where there were no computers, no mobile phones, no play stations, videos or IPODS (and we aren’t talking very long ago.)   We had loud music at parties and talked and danced with each other. I confess we drank alcohol as well.  If you met someone you really liked and gave them your phone number you had an excruciating wait  hoping they would ring.

When the call did come you would have to rush toward the ringing phone in the family home competing with your siblings, all hurtling towards it.  Then your little brother having got their first would announce to the whole family “there’s a boy on the phone for you!”

After about three minutes a chorus of “get off the phone, I want to make a call” and “how can anyone ring me when you are on the phone” started.  Four teenagers, two parents and one landline.

How things have changed.