People are adapting to texting and emails very quickly, especially the new generation. It's not true that you are somehow less responsible for what you write in a text message these days. In fact I think the only reason for somebody to believe otherwise is that at least you have it now on record as opposed to hearing nothing or rumors who said what when.
I think he's arguing against the excuse for avoiding healthy interaction rather than the medium of communication. If text messaging provoked us to be more earnest and empathetic, then it wouldn't be considered as much of a problem.
I understand that. But I am arguing that people are not less empathetic. People are the same. The expressive power of the text message is worse, but this is being fixed very quickly. If you count community-ranked reputation-based systems (such as say HN) it will be far superior to the so called "healthy interaction" in terms of efficiency and trust. Then there is video and audio communication. Perfectly viable to run 100 million dollar businesses and relationships. It's really not that bad.
