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Last Updated: Oct 16th, 2008 - 13:33:17 |
The following is a text message I sent to a friend the other day: "The more I think about it the more I realize the social implications of the text message and therefore must opine about it."
The fact is I'm a text message junkie. I rarely talk on the phone to anyone these days, including my mother (unless I'm calling for cash). And it's no surprise that so many people are abandoning traditional forms of communication. Texts are easy in so many ways because they are written on their own terms, they can be replied to or not replied to at your leisure and texts offer the sender a moment to ponder the message they're about to send, thus avoiding potential diarrhea of the mouth.
My friend (we'll call her Ann) and I are prime examples of the evolution of the text message and it's implications on society, especially day-to-day relationships. We send anywhere from 20 to 30 texts back and forth a day, while we may only talk on the phone three times all week.
"I love text messaging," she told me one day. "It's a way for people who have confrontation problems to further avoid any real confrontations."
Not exactly a sound endorsement, for sure. Not to mention, texts are time consuming. A girl once dumped me via text. The process took all of the afternoon and much of my evening.
And there is more and more proof to the detriment of the text message visible in everyday life. People text while they walk through a crowded campus, bumping into anyone who gets into their distracted path. Then there's the text driver. According to a recent AAA poll, 50 percent of accidents are due to drivers being distracted while behind the wheel. Of those 50 percent, nearly half of them were due to text messaging. And no Bluetooth technology is going to solve that problem any time soon.
Then there's the issue of the breakdown of the English language. (I'm not privy to the ways of foreign-language text, but I have to assume the same lingual deterioration is as much an issue abroad as it is in English-speaking nations.)
Nowhere is this more evident than at the Webopedia website (www.webopedia.com; keywords: text message abbreviations) where the site lists definitions of thousands of text acronyms, including classics such as LMAO (laughing my ass off), TMI (too much information), OMG (oh my God) to the more elaborate and seemingly useless YWHNB (yes, we have no bananas) and NIFOC (naked in front of computer). That last one is particularly useful and, for the record, I am NIFOC right now.
But like it or not, texting has become an integral part of the social structure. On the first day of the semester, I overheard a young man on his telephone say to the person on the other end: "Do you text?" Obviously the young gentleman prefers texting to talking and, no doubt, the person on the other end - and everyone else in our fine nation - best get hip to it soon, lest they be ostracized from the global community altogether.
With that said, HAND (have a nice day), GB (God bless) and SYS (see you soon).
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