A Topic Proposal on the Effects of Texting on Face-to-Face Relationships

My topic proposal is “How has texting affected face-to-face relationships?” I am interested in this topic because I do a fair amount of texting and I would like to know just how big of an affect does it have on relationships that I have in my life, should I slow down on the amount of texting that I do? This question is rather significant because more and more people prefer to just texting then having an actual conversation with someone and I’m curious just how much does texting actually hinder our ability to have a relationship with anyone; does it affect our ability to communicate effectively when face-to-face? Does this affect business as well? Does this make having a romantic relationship harder because you both have run out of ideas to talk about since you already talked over the phone? Through this research, I am hoping that I will find out the answers to all those questions.

There are a few things that I do already know about this topic, for example, is that ever since texting has been around more and more people prefer it over face-to-face and even phone calls. I’ve gathered that just from observing people that more and more people’s heads are down staring at their phone. If you’ve ever been to the mall recently you know what I mean. So my first thought is that it must definitely have some sort of an effect on communication skills. The biggest thing that leads me to believe this is that when we text we don’t use proper English we use abbreviations; the more we use improper English the worse our communication skills get.

To come up with an effective research strategy I first have to ask myself what do I already know and what do I need to find out. Things that I don’t know about this topic yet, but would like to find out are for example; is if there is any proven causality to texting too much or if everything I’ve seen and observed is just correlations. I don’t know any actual statistics about the amount of time spent texting related to how well someone then can communicate face-to-face. Nor do I know if someone that doesn’t text that much has better communication skills than say someone that texts all day. These questions are very intriguing.

The goal behind asking this question is not just to say that people are texting too much we already know that. The idea here is to show that does the amount of texting actually have a direct effect on our relationships; may that be business relationships or even romantic ones. When asked who my attended audience is I simply say everyone that owns a phone, laptop, computer, tablet, etc… these are the devices that we not only spend most of our day on but also each of these devices are capable of texting or some form of electronic messaging. Now as someone that texts and uses these devices on a daily basis I want to find out the answers to those questions so that way not only will I let others know, but I can make changes in my daily life as well.

This is a fairly contentious topic because initially, the answer that you will get from most people is that either they have not noticed a difference, no there is no difference, they simply don’t care if there is, or some may even get affined that you asked them and tell you it’s none of your business. Although as we know there many different articles out there that have proved there is definitely something going go between texting and interpersonal communication. My goal for this paper is to hopefully find some proof that there is a causal relation that proves or disproves texting’s effect on face-to-face communication.

I am going to start out with simple web searches to see how many articles, PDF files, journal entries, etc… That are out there saying one way or the other. Then comparing the papers to see if there are any underlying themes that show texting has an effect or not even if it’s just someone that says there is only a relation. If I get more people saying there is only a correlation well then that will disprove that question and I’ll write my paper over why.

I am positive that as I continue my research more questions are going to come up, but the hand full that I have right now that I would like to answer through this research are. What’s the causal relation between texting and communication? Does texting on a more frequent basis effect that way you can hold a conversation? How does texting affect business communication? Does constant text affect romantic relationships? Now all of these I feel are great questions and I’m hoping I’ll get the chance to answer them all, but the one I am going to focus on the most is the first one “what if any, is the casual relation between texting and face-to-face communication”.

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