Small talk: Do u txt?
By Casey Gillis on Jun. 26, 2008
t’s a scene Sweet Briar College Dean of Students Jonathan Green has witnessed many times: two students walking side-by-side across campus, each with a cell phone planted firmly against her ear.
“They’re both talking on the phone when they’d have a better time talking to each other,” said Green.
Or if they’re not talking, both are typing away furiously on their keypads, sending text messages.
“Young people can’t enjoy not playing with a toy,” Green said with a laugh.
The cell phone is one toy that isn’t going anywhere, and text messaging is a big part of that.
The Wireless Association recently reported that more than 48 billion texts were sent in December 2007. That amounts to 1.6 billion a day, an increase of 157 percent from December 2006.
Divided opinions
Text message usage varies depending on the person. Those who responded to a query on The Burg’s MySpace page ran the gamut.
Some people, like Heather Kee, use texting for almost every communication. She said she probably sends an average of 100 texts a day.
“I love (it),” said Kee, 35. “I’m not a huge talker and with my job and busy lifestyle, texting is a perfect way for me to keep in touch with friends and family. I … hardly ever speak over the telephone unless it’s vital and/or a very important issue.
“I can’t imagine not having text messaging.”
Others, like Erin Tebo, use it for casual updates.
“I think text messaging is a nice, convenient way to ask someone a quick question or (to) get a quick update on plans,” said Tebo, 25, who estimates she sends between 10 and 20 messages a day.
And then there are those who find the entire practice distasteful.
“I don’t know how to use it, (and) I don’t want to know how,” said Barbara Sims, 55. “I think it’s impersonal, rude and the coward’s way of getting a message across. I have seen too many people say things by text that they would never say in person.”
An unwitting victim
As the debate rages on, one thing’s for sure: texting has definitely had an impact on our society.
“In terms of the field of communications, every new technology changes us and our lives and our behavior,” said Jennifer Gauthier, a Randolph College communications professor.
“It’s just the next new technology and has, really, the same pros and cons (of others that came before it).”
Most troubling to educators are the bad habits text messaging (and e-mail and Instant Messaging before it) can encourage: abbreviations, bad spelling and incomplete sentences.
Gauthier said it’s changed the whole way we use language, into what she calls “text message-speak.”
“It really is like a foreign language,” she said. “People who don’t use it don’t know it.”
It could be a generational thing. A March Pew Internet and American Life Project study reported that 60 percent of adults ages 18-29 use a cell phone for texting or e-mailing on an average day, and an April study found that 36 percent of teens text their friends daily.
It’s even been played for laughs, like in an AT&T commercial where a grandmother and her teen grandchildren speak entirely in text abbreviations, like BFF (“best friend forever”) and IDK (“I don’t know”).
Texters often focus on using the easiest and most expedient words to get their point across because of limited space, said Green.
He and Gauthier have both seen it seep into their students’ class work.
“I’m a musician and the saying is, ‘Practice makes permanent,’” Green said. “(We are) perpetually reinforcing a substandard, and after awhile, it becomes a second nature.
“The written word is an unwitting victim.”
The April Pew study found that almost 64 percent of teens say they have used some kind of written informality in their schoolwork, with 38 percent saying they’d used shortcuts, like “LOL” (“laughing out loud).
At the same time, 73 percent of the teen respondents said that texting and similar technologies have had no impact on the writing they do for school. Fifteen percent said it’s helped improve their school writing, while 11 percent said it has harmed it.
One teen even told researchers she thought text messaging abbreviations helped her when it came to taking notes.
“We have to hurry up and take them and knowing the text language … helps,” she said.
The language of love
A recent Chicago Tribune article focused on the ways in which text messaging has changed how we court, saying texting is “the contemporary, wireless equivalent of passing notes in class.”
Experts interviewed for that story said texting makes it easier for shy people to make their first move and helps avoid the awkwardness that can come with some phone conversations.
“With text messages, you can take your time to think about the answer,” Chicago-based relationship expert Carlos Cruz told the Tribune. “With a phone call, you have to be super-animated in those five to 10 minutes of the conversation. It’s just so much more pressure than a simple text message.”
Kee agrees.
“It’s a great way to stay in touch with someone that you have just begun dating,” she said. “It’s also a great flirting tool.”
But what about entire relationships that occur via text?
Tebo said she has friends whose relationships have played out that way, and she doesn’t understand how it’s possible.
“It is so easy to misinterpret someone’s emotion or mood through a text message,” she said.
Creeping into your life
The constant availability texting offers can be both a pro and a con.
Thanks to cell phones, for the most part, people can be reached anywhere, anytime. Add in text messaging, and you can’t even use the excuse that you didn’t have time to talk when so-and-so called. Depending on your proficiency, it can take all of two minutes to send a text.
“It creeps into your life,” Gauthier said. “There’s this expectation that we’re always available. People expect immediate responses from people now.
“I just feel like there’s no part of our life that hasn’t been touched by technology.”
It comes in handy if there’s an emergency of some sort, but can be a nuisance in other situations, she said.
“When does anyone just sit and have a quiet moment anymore?”
Tebo said she keeps her texting to a minimum because she thinks people are losing their ability to interact socially if it goes beyond that.
“They are constantly relying on their cell phone to do the job for them,” she said. “I have friends that will try to have hours of conversation over text messages and are constantly asking me why I don’t respond.
“I can’t even have a face-to-face conversation with them without being interrupted by someone who isn’t even there (but is texting them).”
If people never stop talking, they don’t say much, Green said.
“If we had less immediate ways of communicating with each other, we might have more meaningful communication,” he said. “Ideally with correct grammar, punctuation and spelling.”
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