David Brooks recent op-ed in the NYTimes is provocative in arguing for a link between the growth of text-messaging and the decline of committed love. Specifically:
Technology, especially cellphone and texting technology, dissolves obstacles. Suitors now contact each other in an instantaneous, frictionless sphere separated from larger social institutions and commitments.
People are thus thrown back on themselves. They are free agents in a competitive arena marked by ambiguous relationships. Social life comes to resemble economics, with people enmeshed in blizzards of supply and demand signals amidst a universe of potential partners.
The opportunity to contact many people at once seems to encourage compartmentalization, as people try to establish different kinds of romantic attachments with different people at the same time.
It seems to encourage an attitude of contingency. If you have several options perpetually before you, and if technology makes it easier to jump from one option to another, you will naturally adopt the mentality of a comparison shopper.
A few bloggers have taken issue with Brook’s analysis. Matthew Yglesias writes that love really hasn’t changed that much, and in the ways it has changed has not necessarily been for the worse (cue reference to love and relationship in Mad Men). He also cites the attached visual on the growth of cell-phone use and sarcastically points to the absurdity of arguing for a direct relationship between love’s decline and technological growth (0 bad relationships -> 95% over the last 15 years?). 
Ezra Klein takes a different rebuttal approach in pointing to how technology played a role in the development of a committed relationship with his current girlfriend:
Columns like Brooks’s irk me because they demean not only my lived experiences, but those of everyone I know. To offer a slightly more modern rebuttal, Sunday was my one-year anniversary with my girlfriend. A bit more than a year ago, we first met, the sort of short encounter that could easily have slipped by without follow-up. A year and a week ago, she sent me a friend request on Facebook, which makes it easy to reach out after chance meetings. A year and five days ago, we were sending tentative jokes back-and-forth. A year and four days ago, I was steeling myself to step things up to instant messages. A year and three days ago, we were both watching the “Iron Chef” offal episode, and IMing offal puns back-and-forth, which led to our first date. A year ago today, I was anxiously waiting to leave the office for our second date.
In general, I like Brook’s article, but don’t have to take it the whole way to see its general point. Technology does allow us to connect with a greater quantity of people (send out mass twitters, be followed by a multitude of people on facebook, text multiple people at the same time), but along with such potential comes less accountability between our digital profile and the actual way we interact with people. Technologies like texting and twitter create a potential to navigate multiple budding relationships at once in a way that was more difficult in previous years.
At the same time, taking Yglesias’ point the actual correspondence between technology and relational decline will obviously not be linear, and to Klein’s point, technology is somewhat neutral in that it might be used for either good or bad (see: Einstein’s role in the development of nuclear technology…)
The kernel of truth in Brook’s article is his assertion that cultivating a posture of openness to options, in this case enabled by technology, can be detrimental to investing in a particular person. Think of it with careers… leaving oneself open to multiple options is a great hedge strategy, but at a certain point one has to open a specific door, move through it at the expense of others, with all the risk that comes along with such choice. Brooks is right that these technologies allow people to hedge in relationships for a longer period of time. In reality, this might be a good thing seen by lower rates of divorce for people who marry later. Nevertheless, its more than fair to ask whether hedge strategies are ineffective for building commitment once one is in a relationship, and whether such approaches carry-on with inertia from singleness to the time when one is in a relationship. In other words, can the guy who spends years texting to hedge in the relational market quickly drop such habits when he enters into a committed relationship?
ADDENDUM- For the nerds among us, there might be a few questions that would be relevant to this debate from a sociological perspective:
- Does the availability of texting lead to increased a) hedging strategies/ behavior, and/or b) hedging mentality in relationships
- Do hedging strategies prior to relationships correspond with greater hedging mentality once in a relationship (e.g. does this mentality hold with inertia)?
- Does a hedging mentality negatively influence relationship development/ lead to destructive relationship outcomes (e.g. divorce)?
Nov. 4, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Interesting you should comment on this piece – I read it yesterday and in some ways found it rather bizarre (as I have at other times when David Brooks has tried to analyze romantic relationships – his attempt at defending certain “types” of affairs I found a little disturbing.)
I actually read his piece entirely differently. I believed his take home point is that new technologies have allowed us to by-pass certain social constructs that previously “checked” our own ability to pick a partner. For example, shortly after I got my own cell phone for the first time, my mother lamented the fact that while at home, a boyfriend would now call me on my cell phone instead of the landline at home, preventing her from having the chance to pick up the phone first and interact with said beau for a few minutes before passing the phone off to me. She quickly picked up on the change that my having a cell phone reduced her ability to “check in” on my relationships and offer an opinion as a parent.
At the time, I rolled my eyes…
I found this op-ed to be consistent with Brooks’ other columns on the ‘Individual’ vs. the ‘Institution’, which was really the overarching theme: that by moving our relationship into the public spheres of school/work/church/family/neighborhood, we are (hopefully) provided with the “help/wisdom” to weigh whether the relationship has permament legs (and to value this assesment).
Nov. 4, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Hey Carrie
I think Brooks sometimes makes the problem of thinking that change is bad by comparing it to previous hyper-idealized times. So, in your example, not going through parents makes the parents lose control… but do the parents always know what is best for their child… maybe, maybe not. Each new solutions brings new problems has always been my motto, but its just as bit of a problem to over-idealize the past.
Good points as always. I see what you are saying here, and you are probably more on target with his intended point than me
I do agree with his general point (or at least my reading of his general point) that cultivating an ability to juggle multiple relationships at any point in time, while a good hedging strategy, is a skill set which is somewhat misaligned with the skill sets which enable long-term relationship health.
pb