People hate texting. We post stories to Instagram in a heartbeat, but we’d rather lose our left eye than respond to “How was your day?”

Texting lacks context — body language, inflection, etc. — so it’s harder to communicate. But that’s not why people hate it — rather, it’s because we’re afraid to be vulnerable.

Smartphones promise constant access, which gets overwhelming. This is the age of bosses texting you at your wedding, Find Friends tracking your every footstep, and Facebook advertising clothes your ex once wore.

It's also the age of never getting lost, even if you're on another continent and have zero sense of direction. It's the age of connecting with long lost friends. And it's the age of being able to quote “…Baby One More Time” whenever, wherever.

But I digress — texting is not the problem. It’s fear of showing your true, sometimes-shitty self. So we bat away notifications. And eventually, we bat away others.

The internet depersonalizes. It enables despicable comments on newspaper articles, dumb tweets, every form of regrettable communication. There are no consequences — nobody is glaring at you after you call someone fat, stupid, or worse.

The same applies to texting — instead of telling the person you're dating that it's not gonna work, you ghost. Instead of calling someone out because they hurt you, you leave them on "Read." As Sylvia Plath wrote, "I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead."

That doesn't mean we should abandon texting. We need to embrace the messiness that communication entails, and stop curating every interaction. We need to misconstrue what someone sends us, and then ask them what they meant. We need to fuck up, and be okay with fucking up. We need to be ourselves.