NGT intern Sherrie Hui on how her cell phone has changed the way she and other college students communicate—and order pizza.
I’m a college senior, and I’m somewhat ashamed to say that I’m a regular texter. Call me neurotic, but I used to think it was a real issue if a guy would text and not call after a date. Red flag, I’d think. He’s insecure or bad on the phone or wants to keep things cazh (a.k.a. afraid of labels like “relationship”). I thought IM and texting were the death of real conversation. I mean, isn’t it cheating when you get an extra couple of minutes to think up a witty rejoinder? Needless to say, my standards have dropped.
My cell phone puts my social circle at my fingertips, but it also creates an odd communicative delay, like those satellite interviews on the nightly news, where Brian Williams tells a joke and the White House correspondent fake-laughs 3 seconds later. Texting also engenders an emotional distance—and self-deception. Maybe something was up with the network, and he actually got my message 3 hours late. Maybe it’d be easier to apologize to her through text, so I can avoid the yelling. Fortunately, I haven’t yet caved to either of these scenarios, but studies show that many of my peers have.
In spite of all the bad habits that they may build, cell phones have become our lifeline. For college students, who’ve probably had cell phones since high school or earlier, our entire social histories are stored on our SIM cards. We thumb away on hidden cell phone keypads during lectures, lining up dinner after class. We get mass “what are you up to tonight?” texts on most weekends. Before I head out, I send Evite addresses or locations from nymag.com directly to my phone. Getting on the subway at Columbia University, I spot countless heads bowed over mobile games or bobbing along to music played through cell phones. Lazy nights in call for a text order to Campusfood.com or Papa John’s.
Mobile internet opens even more convenient doors to information. I never hit 411 anymore, now that I have Google Maps and Hopstop.com on-the-go. Then there are mobile social networks; I can see what my friends are doing from their Gmail or Facebook status, without putting in a single call.
When I lost my phone this summer, I couldn’t go 12 hours (most of which were dormant) without getting a new one. As soon as I got the replacement, I was on Facebook creating an event called “Sherrie left her phone in a cab!” and inviting everyone on my friends list to drop their number on the invite message board. When I punched those numbers into my new phone, I noticed all the contacts that were missing: the acerbic ex from a disastrous breakup last year, my “nerd camp” friends, an old philosophy TA—all people who’d left a digital footprint on my old cell, but not exactly friends I could reach out to again to load up my new one. Oddly, it was the loss of a personal electronic device rather than a birthday or graduation that felt like the close of a chapter in my life.
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