Addicted to texting just like the kid.
I refuse to buy text service on my phone.
I work on PCs for a living, and have lived long enough to see the world evolve from no PCs at all to the handheld devices we use today. I can say the following in complete seriousness and with the surety of experience that I know what I am talking about:
Texting has no value the way society has chosen to use it. It serves no purpose that enriches lives and for a great many is nothing more than a disease. To maintain a civil society there will eventually have to be a backlash against most text use in public. And I don’t mean laws I mean socially accepted behavior. We have to get to the point where even teenagers look at their friend during lunch and say, “Get off that damn thing already, it’s rude!”
Instant Messaging was initally pretty good. I like Yahoo Instant Messenger for example. People you know can send a message. It sits there patiently waiting. You can reply whenever you HAVE TIME. But somewhere along the line... we jumped from it being an aid to our lives, to it BEING our lives.
This kind of paper thin meaningless relationship with people extends to “friend lists.” Same disease. You don’t have 1000 friends. The word “friend” is diminished and damaged by Facebook. They aren’t friends. And even by dictionary definitions they are barely “acquaintences.”
“Strangers” is a better word for 950 of the 1000 people on your friends list that are getting the gritty details of your entire life.
Think hard on it. If you are old enough, think back 20 years. Is this really better? You know it isn’t. I’m no luddite. I love tech. But out of control texting is just not good.
“But out of control texting is just not good.”
I never understood the draw of texting. But, as I tell anybody that will listen, my eyes are too bad and my thumbs are to big for texting. However, I do like GETTING short texts from my wife or kids for some things rather than answering the phone and getting into a conversation. “Pick me up at 8”. “Buy milk too”.
And at the noisy arena the other night my wife called and I couldn’t hear a thing (bad ears too!). So I had my son text her to find out what was going on, and replied to my wife’s question on where to find something, and he texted her back.
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From the article: “Children who text late into the night do not fall asleep as well..”
Boy - I’m glad that doesn’t happen to us adults on FR! ;)
I’m a tech guy also, and I agree with everything you said. I don’t text, I don’t have fb, in fact, I don’t even have a cell phone anymore, but I am probably going to have to change that, just for work and emergencies. The worst part of all this is that, it detracts from real-life relationships for a lot of people. Even if you are texting your real-life friends and relatives, it’s so much more impersonal, and it can’t be good for maintaining a relationship if that starts to become the primary means of communication.