Text Messaging’s Effects on Our Society Essays

Kate Hafner’s article, “Texting May Be Taking a Toll” claims that texting is an issue to teenagers around the world. As an illustration, Hafner starts the article by identifying that teenagers send a drastic amount of texts in their everyday lives. according to the Nielsen Company, “American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008”(1). This is just one of the examples of many that portrays teenagers around the world send many text messages. Along with teenagers sending many texts a day, hafner also shows in this article that texting is affecting teenager's life in many different ways for example, preventing teenagers' way of becoming independent. Just as professor Turkle presented,

“Our generation doesn't ring the doorbell. They text or call to say they're outside,” this line is from one of the well-known social networks, Tweeter, which shows how the way of communication has change in this modern life. According to 2013 statistics by Business Insider, in United States alone, smartphone owners aged 18 to 24 send 2,022 texts per month on average — 67 texts on a daily basis — and receive another 1,831 texts (Cocotas). Nowadays, technology such as text messaging has practically replaced traditional face to face communication among the society primarily in young generations because texting allows messages to be sent fast and effortless. In order to quickly type what they are trying to say in text messaging, people are

Texting allows us to stay in touch with others in a most efficient way. We type a quick text, hit send, and in a matter of seconds our recipient has our text. Receiving a text is fast, but typing out a clear, concise

CTIA – The Wireless Association reports that the number of text messages sent in the US rose from 362.5 billion in 2007 to an astonishing 2.19 trillion in 2012. In light of

Instant gratification has become the social norm in this generation but is diminishing the quality of communication. Cell phones have changed massively in the past few years, making communication weaken each time cell phones are updated. At first, cell phones were just used for calling. Calling was the only operation that they were capable of and most of the time calling was not even convenient on a cell phone. Although the concept of texting has been out for decades, actual texting became available to all society in 1994 (Turrettini). Texting instantly

Teenagers interact socially with text messaging, that has increased frequency. With more communication, negative effects can now take place. Teens now talk less face-to-face with texting communication (Welton). In 2000, fourteen billion text were sent out monthly. In 2010, 188 billion were being sent out over the United States (Kluger).

Years of research show that texting is leading to an increase in social awkwardness in teens and children. “Nini Halkett has taught history there for two decades. As her students are increasingly immersed in texting, Halkett also finds them increasingly shy and awkward in person.” (Jennifer Ludden’s article “Teen Texting Soars; Will Social Skills Suffer?” paragraph 14). With a majority of teens feeling more at ease texting each other, this can and will lead to

Today, from toddler to senior citizen uses phone. The most used applicable applications in phone are the text or SMS. I wonder how many people even know what does SMS stands for. We use the short message service to communicate easily because it’s short and quick. The two articles “2b or not 2b” by David Crystal and “We Never Talk Anymore: The Problem with Text Messaging” by Jeffrey Kluger both talks about communicating through texting and our use of language. Crystal is in favor for texting and Kluger is against texting. I agree with Kluger when it comes to this topic, I feel learning how to have a conversation face to face is very important. “I talk to kids and they describe their fear of conversation,” says Turkle. “An 18-year-old I interviewed

Katie Hafner’s article, “Texting May Be Taking a Toll,” displays that the rising number of texts sent by adolescents day in and day out is starting to take a big toll on them, their lifestyle, and the people around them. To start off, in the first part of the article Hafner expresses that the point of the first section is that with a growing number of young people utilizing texting and using it nonstop texting is causing serious issues such as anxiety, failing grades, distraction in school, sleep issues and many others. The author exclaims in the section that, “The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who say it is leading to anxiety distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation.”

We hear a lot these days about texting - the ability to get/send a text message from/to anyone, anywhere, via wireless networks and some kind of portable device, which might be a fancy pager, a digital cellphone or a palmtop computer. The technology is here, though it doesn't work everywhere yet. We could argue about how affordable or reliable texting is, but we can't deny it exists and will probably become more widespread. But is this a good thing? In my opinion, there are certain ways in which texting affects many teenagers.

Texting is a form of communication that has quickly become the default manner of communicating with others. Truss stated that texting is an “effective communication”. No longer do I have to send

The ability to communicate quickly and efficiently allows for the transmission of important data instantaneously. One such example of this is emergency text messages that can be provided to individuals for natural disasters. Should a natural disaster be about to affect an area such as a tornado, sever storm, flood, etc., people that live in that area can have emergency texts sent to their phones to warn them about the impending danger. This can literally save the lives of those who would have been otherwise caught unaware of the potential danger that they were in. Additionally, text messaging allows for people to maintain personal relationships with those that they do not have the ability to see on a regular basis. As a study showed, the average teenager uses the text message for about 54% of their interactions with their friends. Face-to-face talking was actually the third most used method of communication, weighing in at 33%. The ability of instant, efficient communication that the text message provides can help people maintain a relationship with a friend when the two literally live on opposite sides of the country (Minshall, 2012).

Recently a growing form of communication for organisations. It is time efficient way of sending information to a large number of reciepntants. It is cost effective and more likely to reach the receipatnt as they are likely to check their mobile telephone several times throughout the day. Unfortanaley text messages can be open for interpretation of tone or mood. It can also be inappropriate for some organistation communication.

Texting has many effects. When I think of texting many dangerous and unethical behaviors come to mind. We all know texting has a brief history, many people prefer texting to talking on the phone, and texting has its own problems when misuse. When we are texting communication is lost and is in considered of others and mostly affecting people’s health.

The main cause of the texting craze is the ability to send and receive quick messages. It is simpler than making a phone call and getting caught up in a conversion when your time is limited. It also allows you to share and respond instantly so there is a sense of always being connected to peers. Texting has become more popular than talking on the phone or even face to face. So much so that “texting has become the way that adolescents forge social bonds, and texting between adolescents often serves to promote social cohesion in peer groups”