Call Me Or E-Mail Me or Text Message Me or Try My Work E-Mail or IM Me
By Mark de la Vina, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.
Don’t even think about getting her phone number. And stop worrying whether he’ll call you the next day.
In this age of high-speed instant communication, the way potential lovers interact is a complicated, tiered system that has reconfigured the way we court.
Gone are the days when potential paramours exchanged phone numbers and contemplated too long and hard over the call. With the emergence of e-mail, text messaging, instant messaging and handheld devices like Treos and BlackBerrys, dating has evolved so that the thrill of a quick response goes hand-in-clammy-hand with the uneasiness of knowing you are reachable no matter where you are.
Michele Fontana, 45 and a divorced networks engineer from Santa Clara, changed her dating ways as she incorporated new technology into her life. Unlike younger members of the singles pool who seem born with communication gadgets in hand, Fontana adopted text messaging, buying a Treo 650 and giving up her landline.
A doctoral student in neuropsychology at San Jose State University, Fontana used to give her phone number to an interested suitor. Now she prefers exchanging e-mails to establish communication. If she likes what she reads, she suggests talking via Yahoo messenger or her cell phone.
"If you have a thought or feeling, or if something happens that you want to share, technology allows you to be spontaneous in a way you couldn’t before," Fontana says. "It gives you a new avenue to touch them."
Today, people who date are likely to make that first post-introduction contact through e-mail. A phone conversation follows after some flirtation and virtual footsies are played via text messaging or instant messaging.
Sex expert Helen Fisher says it’s changing the way we date.
A biological anthropologist at Rutgers University who specializes in the evolution and future of sex, love and marriage and gender differences in the brain and behavior, Fisher says new technologies have expanded our ability to communicate while increasing the possibilities — and emotional impact — of dating.
"The technology has made it more emotional," says Fisher, author of "Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love’ " (Henry Holt, 2004). "Not only can you express your emotions almost instantly and have the other person respond, but if you express yourself and they don’t respond, you instantly want to know why not."
Noemi Tappang, 20, of San Jose prefers the more succinct text messaging to initiate contact with someone interesting. A photojournalism major at San Jose State, Tappang explains that texting gives her a degree of control a phone conversation lacks.
"Text messages are quick," she says. "And you can respond only if you feel like it."
Such means of communication makes sense for anyone locked in the hectic Silicon Valley lifestyle. Oliver Mogan, 35, of San Jose says that calling on the phone is not always convenient. A systems administrator for the U.S. government, he will give his cell phone number to women, but that isn’t always his preferred way of reaching out.
"A lot of people cannot always make calls at will because of their job schedule or lifestyle," he says. "And you can communicate through text messages and instant messaging at work without the boss knowing."
An e-mail breakup
The downside of text messaging is its depersonalized nature. An e-mail, for example, isn’t always something the recipient is obligated to respond to, says Stacie Hrabal, 41, who manages trade shows. And though breaking up on the phone was once considered a potentially heartless act, those who dated briefly and mostly communicated through e-mail can conveniently end their courtship with an electronic message.
"I went on several dates with a guy, and we weren’t feeling the vibe," she says. "So we actually hammered out ending it on e-mail. I preferred that to the phone or talking in person because it allowed me to sit back and carefully think about what to say instead of reacting to him on the phone."
There are pitfalls to establishing a rapport electronically, says Robbie Blinkoff, a principal anthropologist for Context Research, a Baltimore-based ethnographic research company that has tracked such cultural trends as electronic communications.
Like Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, who labored over when to advance their exclusively e-mail relationship to an in-person encounter in "You’ve Got Mail," people who rely too much on electronic interaction, even an emotionally intimate one, ultimately must step it up.
"You have to understand when it’s time to put the phone or the BlackBerry down and have a face-to-face," Blinkoff says. "That’s a key moment of transition."
Time for face-to-face
Match.com encourages clients not to spend too much time online with suitors, says Kristin S. Kelly, senior director of public relations for the online dating site. "Technology is the most efficient way to find that person," she explains, "but the true test is in meeting. It’s very easy to get lulled by technology into forgetting that."
That isn’t stopping users of electronic devices from developing personal relationships using cell phones and the like. Grey Worldwide, a global communications company in New York City, based a series of Nokia TV commercials on a survey asking how cell phones have changed the lives of their users. One ad for the Nokia 8801 features a woman fuming over a man who she says stepped over the line by inputting her number into his cell when they first met. In another commercial, a woman gleefully deletes an ex-boyfriend’s phone number from her cell phone directory, revealing a moment of telecommunications catharsis when the phone asks "Are you sure?"
"What has happened is an incredible ability to personalize everything, even in dating," says Dave Tutin creative director of Grey Worldwide. "The phone can now be used to delay the process or speed it up. You can call a guy across a bar and get things going very fast."
Tutin says that in Japan, cell phone users now can input personal profiles into their devices. With Bluetooth technology, the phones of two strangers with similar profiles "talk to each other" when they are near one another, alerting and potentially enabling two compatible individuals to meet up.
"If you think technology is changing the world now, wait 10 minutes," Tutin says. "It’s going to be incredible."
Contact Mark de la Vina at mdelavina@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5914.
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Copyright (c) 2006, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.
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