When to Call or Text

One reason why sending a text message may be better than calling is that you can text someone at any time, even when they aren’t available to talk or call, and they can see what you wanted to say when they are on their phone. This is a reason why texting is more flexible that phone calls don’t allow most of the time. Texting is also basically no interruption to people they may be around; the only way it can be a small interruption is if they check their phone, especially if they are at work or in an environment that needs to be quiet, like church. In private places, even a vibrating phone can be less noticeable than a ringtone or talking aloud. It is also easier to give updates on things to people, like they are going to be at someone’s house in 10 minutes. One reason why texting might not be better than calling is that it’s easy to misinterpret text messages and to understand what people actually mean. Sometimes texts can hide sarcasm or your emotions, you may say something and some person might think you are mad at them just by what the words say. Another one would be having a long conversation is harder than a phone call, where you can get all the words you are trying to say faster without having to type a lot of words for the other person to read. Autocorrect also may correct words that some might not want it to fix, making it possible for it to type the wrong words, leading to more misunderstanding of what people mean in their text messages.

Calling may be better than sending text messages is people can hear your tone and expression when talking to someone about something. Which will help people recognize sarcasm or your tone. Phone calls is also better for emergencies or dealing with something hard to understand, since talking to someone is faster and efficient than typing a bunch of words to figure out how to solve a problem. During fast-paced and stressful situations being able to speak directly to someone leads to quicker solutions. My last reason why calling is better is because you can get the responses from the other person you wanted in an instant without having to wait for a few minutes at least for a message back. Occasionally, people can’t check their phones instantly, so calling them is most likely to get their attention. Calling has its disadvantages because you have to stop whatever you’re doing at the moment to answer a phone call. It also can be rude or inappropriate to answer a phone call while you’re making time for someone, such as a date. My final reason is that people around you can hear what you and possibly the other person are talking about. While text messages are more discreet, making the people near you not know what you and the other person are talking about.

Some situations calling may be better than texting would be someone has a question about their application, or someone needs to call family members because they are getting sent to the hospital. Sometimes when texting might be better is texting your friend that you’re going to be a little late to a restaurant such as saying that you will be 10 minutes late.

In my personal life, my friends and I typically send text messages to each other more than calls for things like making plans to hang out. It feels more relaxing and easier to simply send a text message and to wait for them to respond when they have time, because simply if they don’t have the time to answer, they don’t have the time to hang out.However, if it was my professional work life, I would mostly be calling or being called when it comes to people from work because people expect more mature conversations going into adulthood, especially your boss. Usually working somewhere, there’s going to be something urgent that is going to come up that you will have to resolve, so calling is more urgent and used in adulthood in an occupational life. This is why I believe communication changes mostly into phone calls while becoming an adult.

“Texting Congress 1” by afagen is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.