Teens, and voice calls, and emails, Oh my!

The way the world communicates has changed radically in the short time today’s high school students have been alive. The prevalence of text messaging and social media are increasingly ubiquitous and that is especially true with young people. However, that doesn’t mean that other forms of communication have been replaced. Adults and “the business world” use them regularly. Since voice calls, email, and snail mail are so ingrained in how adults communicate, those are second nature to us. I’m starting to see signs that we’re not instilling these communication skills in our young people and that is going to lead to problems.
Let’s start with voice calls. The majority of the calls I receive at school are from parents. No problems there. I do receive occasional calls from students though, and their phone skills are awful. They might ask me a question or to send their transcript, but I bet 90% of the students who call me fail to leave so much as their name in a voicemail. Thus, I’m left guessing who the call was from based on the sound of their voice. When I called one student out on this, he actually debated with me and said no one has to do that anymore because everyone has a cell phone and caller ID. I don’t know about you, but I’m not calling too many offices these days that just use their receptionist’s personal cell phone as their main line.

Another problem is email. Most students do have an email address, though they would be wise to choose an email that’s not going to be embarrassing in the coming years. Emails and usernames that contain references to sex, drugs, or childhood fads aren’t going to hold water down the road. Anyway, the bigger problem here is that not all teenagers check their email regularly. They are used to their regular text messages and the act of having to go into an app or logging onto a computer is a little much for some. Email is the most common way that colleges communicate with their applicants and the way that adults receive many important notifications. High School students are missing some of these and I’ve seen it be a problem with college admissions, for example. (Note: The day after I wrote this, a senior at my school discovered he was denied admission to the university he hoped to attend, and should have gotten into, because he didn’t check the email he received from the university that he was missing part of his application.)
Lastly, there is snail mail. Okay, maybe we don’t send letters with stamps and envelopes as much as we used to, but we do use these on occasion and everyone ships things from time to time. A parent of one of my students once told me a story about the time she asked her teenage son to apply stamps and return address labels to a bunch of envelopes that held invitations to a party she was throwing. It never occurred to him that everything has its place on the front of an envelope so he just put everything haphazardly right in the middle of it. This young man just didn’t know any better! Poor mom. Who thinks to tell someone, “You know the stamp goes in the top right corner, don’t you?”

My point is that we’re not doing a good job forcing our children to develop these skills. Texting and social media are fine, but they still have to know and understand the “old way.” Yes, I’m including email in the “old way.” Honestly, these skills don’t fit nicely into any one place that the schools cover so they shouldn’t be relied on to teach these sorts of things. I think this is the type of thing that is most incumbent upon the parent to teach and we need to step it up.