Long before the advent of text messaging, journalist/novelist Tom Wolfe wrote: “Most people end up all their lives doing their best writing in letters. Especially to a friend, or somebody you think understands you, and somebody you’re not inhibited with, because you don’t have all those forty or fifty or seventy people looking over your shoulder that most of us feel like are there when we actually start writing for public consumption.”
Wolfe essentially foretold what would subsequently become the appeal of text messaging: the opportunity to quickly send and receive messages, however imperfectly written, to friends and others more concerned with what was said than how it was said.
Text messaging emerged as a unique form of communication whose abbreviated content, casual style, and instant feedback would dramatically differ from other forms of writing. Text messages would be easy to read because the nature of the form invites a verb-oriented, simple sentence structure that tends to be direct and to the point. To be sure, the popularity of text messaging is understandable.
But text messaging—and I know this will strike some as radical—has its time and place. Is it really necessary, let alone appropriate, to text message when having a conversation with someone? When engaging in a group discussion? When listening to a sermon? When watching a bride and groom recite their vows? Or when meeting with your therapist to help you overcome your addiction to texting?
Those who insist on texting when it competes with other activities usually think they’re being quite discreet about what they’re doing. They’re not. Students, in particular, who love to text in class, have found all sorts of clever ways of concealing what they’re doing. Ironically, however, many faculty, who also like to text in inappropriate situations, have developed equally sophisticated ways of avoiding detection; thus, they’re able to easily spot students trying to do the same. They may not call out every student, but they know who is and isn’t texting, and they keep a mental ledger. Texting students are seen as lacking consideration, focus, and self-constraint. But the greater harm of in-class texting—unknown to most students—is that seeing students texting often distracts faculty, interrupting their concentration and the flow of their classroom presentation.
Text messaging can also be problematic to the extent it substitutes for conversations whose sensitivity deserves interpersonal, face-to-face discussion. There are better ways to end a relationship, for example, than via a text message exchange. Too, text messaging is obviously less than ideal when the topic of discussion warrants more sustained analysis and supporting evidence than afforded by a texting conversation.
I’ve been trying now for the last hour to complete the ending of this post, but, wouldn’t you know it, I keep getting sidetracked by the siren of incoming text messages, which I obviously can’t ignore. So the last point I would make . . . hold on, I just got another text.
Ha ha but so true!
So True!