The most notable change in our personal interactions comes by way of time spent either physically with another person or in communicating to them via several means. In the days where you kept physical company with a friend/partner/family member you would be required to uphold a level of conversation and activity where it would be obvious if you waned in attention. But now, we can communicate via text, whereby it takes longer to type a sentence than it does to say it; you get thinking time about your responses without the other person interpreting your expressions and body language.
Essentially you can make a 20 minute verbal conversation last all day (or several days) if you need to when it's conducted via email or chat. And when all else fails, you can be AFK and unavailable to respond! Is it easier to just have a pleasant "Hi" from an sms than having to see someone, go through the spiel of "How was your day? What did you get up to?" But surely this contravenes the idea that with all this fantastic technology available to us, we can share more about ourselves and our lives to a greater audience in less time.
So what does that mean for our concept of sharing information with others? Or how well do we effectively know someone these days?
If you spread out how much detail you provide someone over days, weeks, months and years, how much of yourself are you truly letting them see? And then, does this mean we base our relationships on only a small fragment of what we believe the other person to be? - perhaps this is why so many relationships, marriages and associations fall apart, because we believe we know so much about another, and yet we've only just seen a small portion of their true self.I'm a believer that yes, it generally is easier to communicate in dribs and drabs, but it's not the best way to do it... you may be buying time now, but by elongating the interaction period could very well be wasting that time you've just bought in the long run.
