On Text Messaging

I’ve been told that my children’s generation do not email; they text message. I think this is true: everywhere I look I see people, ages say, 10-20 years old, standing with both hands cradling a cell phone whilst their fingers punch away at the keys. Shortly, a message returns, and the punching begins all over again. My daughter gets in the car and texts her friend, “I just got in the car. My father’s here driving. Ignore him.” “K,” is the response.

And I feel like an old fuddy-duddy, but for the most part, I hate text messaging. First, with the older phones I had to keep punching the keys to find the right letter; it was to me an ordeal. Now, with the Blackberry and qwerty keyboards, text messaging becomes easier but the keys are so small that I never send out a message without a spelling error. No spell checks built in, and its too cumbersome to correct my misspellings. Secondly, this text messaging means I am always available--I know, I know, turn off the phone--but it is not that easy, you see, because the purpose of cell phones is to be available, especially during meetings. And somehow it seems easier to ignore a request on aural phone than on a text phone. If older daughter calls and asks me the meaning of a word, I can easily say ‘look it up,’ but if she texts me the message, it is just as easy to text the definition as to text ‘look it up.’

Third, with text messaging I am never alone with my daughters. They are always receiving text messages. In the middle of a conversation, they flip open their phones (or whip out the Blackberry), chuckle (to themselves), and start punching away the keys. I have made it a rule (followed more in the breach than the observance) that when she is with me in the car, she may not text message her friends. She may not even text message me!

What else do I think about text messaging? First, I find all kinds of ways to simplify my language so that I don’t have to type in so much because typing in messages is so painful on these small keys. I suspect we are teaching our children a simplified form of speech to conform to the necessity of text messaging. Second, the ease of text messaging allows everyone (my daughters) to ask really simple equestions of me that without text messaging they would have to answer themselves. Perhaps we are destroying an aspect of creativity and reducing levels of discourse. And we have eliminated spaces of quiet and privacy--worse than emails, which I can always excuse not answering by claiming to be away from my computer--most of us carry our cell phones with us everywhere, and thus, are always accessible to text messages. And especially during meetings.

Finally, text messaging is more available than radio waves. My favorite stations go out of range, but wherever I am, there is the text message. And I am constantly amazed as the radio fades, but the phone keeps texting on. The fading radio reminds me of space, but the cell phone denies it.