Texting: The New Communication, Who Needs Talking, Anyway?

By Ed Anderson

Every month I dread getting my phone bill. Not because I can’t afford to pay it, that’s not the issue, but because my mail carrier may break his back delivering it to me. Like many people I have discovered the joys of texting and maybe go a bit too far with it. Day in and day out there are texts coming into and out of my phone, allowing me to have multiple conversations with the people that I care most about.

It struck me that though I have “The everything unlimited plan” with Sprint; there are rarely any used minutes on my phone. Rather there are tens of thousands text sent each month, and it made me wonder if texting is the new talking on the phone. At one point, every family sitcom had a girl talking on the phone, much to her parent’s annoyance. ‘Modern Family’ always skewers the so called texting culture bringing about the laughs and making sure to wring it for all it is worth.

Yes in the midst of my texting there are mistakes made, and sometimes the way I intended my words to come across loses the meaning. It makes yelling at people very difficult but it also provides plenty of laughs. One needs only to look at “Damn You Autocorrect” to find a few laughs, and to waste a few minutes. While writing this article, I went there and laughed for about half an hour or so and forgot what I was supposed to be doing.

However this isn’t an article about procrastinating, this is about texting being the new communication device. Exchanging numbers with classmates has become a norm and many times, especially when I was in Spanish class, I would text people from the class to ask for help or complain about the professor. This makes it a very useful tool again, especially if you are prone to sickness and need a record of what the assignments for a particular class are.

There may be downfalls to texting but truthfully I don’t know what they are. It’s unusual for me not to be able both sides of an argument because that’s what I do best. In this case though I could be blinded by my own love of texting and that’s why I don’t see any down side to this phenomenon or the new way to communicate, whatever you want to call it. Or should I say whatever you want to text it.