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Has Texting Replaced Talking For Teens?
Hugh Pickens writes "Sue Shellenbarger has an interesting essay in the WSJ where she talks about the 2,000 incoming text messages her son racks up every month — more than 60 two-way communications via text message every day — and her surprise that 2,000 monthly text messages is about average for today's teenagers. 'I have seen my son suffer no apparent ill effects (except a sore thumb now and then), and he reaps a big benefit, of easy, continuing contact with many friends,' writes Shellenbarger. 'Also, the time he spends texting replaces the hours teens used to spend on the phone; both my kids dislike talking on the phone, and say they really don't need to do so to stay in touch with friends and family.' But does texting make today's kids stupid, as Mark Bauerlein writes in his book ' The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future? 'I don't think so. It may make them annoying, when they try to text and talk to you at the same time,' writes Shellenbarger, adding, 'I have found him more engaged and easier to communicate with from afar, because he is constantly available via text message and responds with a faithfulness and speed that any mother would find reassuring.'"
I was part of the "teenager" definition just few years ago and I believe I sent... 3 SMS in my whole life. Most of my friends also barely sent a handful, the worst maybe sent 10 per day. 2000 is just insane.
I don't think they hand out prizes for stating the obvious here?
Technology changes. Cultures change to adopt the new technologies. A few years ago the worry was that instant messenger programs would make people dumb. Now its text messaging. There's no indication that any of this is making anyone substantially stupider. The ignorance of general history, science and geography discussed in the Newsweek article aren't new things. It isn't like we were all history buff 30 years ago and now are all ignorant.
I'm a teen and I call people more than I text, even though I have unlimited texts (or so I think). Am I the only one in the world who calls/talks more on the phone than texting? Then again, I'm not like those 12 year olds who type on their phones like crazed psychos.
Wow... Americans took an entire decade on what the rest of the world has already been doing...
NOW its news...
Give me a freaken break!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
She thinks it's texting that causes that?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Texting is popular because it is an extremely efficient method to keep in touch. It's half-duplex, so both parties don't have to be available at the same time. Text messages are brief and quickly digestible, unlike email. One point the story doesn't address is the idea of how many text messages constitute a conversation. Sure, sometimes it's a single message, but often you might find that over the course of an hour you have exchanged more than a dozen messages with the same friend. Given that, I don't think 60 messages a day for a teenager is all that high. It means they have somewhere between two to four friends. And unlike a phone call, you can actually do homework between messages.
I'm getting REALLY REALLY sick of reading these kinds of reports. Texting is not going to cause the end of civilization or throw us into a depraved existance where nobody sees anyone IRL anymore, and we all are addicted to our technology. This is the baby boomers taking Huxley a bit too seriously. Here's some reality for you: Most of my friends text. Some don't. Of the ones that do, they have a much more active social life and get out of the house a lot more often than those who don't. Texting, and e-mail, and instant messages, is a way for us to all stay in touch with one another in a highly kinetic world where plans are made and broken again in minutes as things change.
Texting doesn't "replace" talking -- it enables it! Look at your average baby boomer: They usually have less than 5 friends, most of them are coworkers, and if they are married their spouse provides most of the social interaction they're going to get. And they rot away watching TV or with hobbies like gardening. On the flip, you've got our generation where having forty friends on facebook is considered average. I see a friend at least once or twice a day. I get more social interaction in the flesh on an average day that my baby boomer parents and aunts and uncles get in a week, sometimes a month! And texting, email, and instant messaging make all of it possible. How else could we connect with each other in an information-rich world where things are moving so fast and we are all so mobile all the time?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
"... But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding of their world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads -- makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number."
-- S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"
People who say that successive generations are getting dumber are really just admitting the ignorance they have of the world.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
As a small business owner I have noticed that those "teens" turn in to my employees and think it's ok to text while working and then expect to get "good jobs" for showing up on time to work. In fact; I have a 17 year old girl who seems quite reasonable, say to me after showing up 20 minutes late that she thought, and I quote "I didn't think it was a big deal". This kind of thinking is not isolated, to her , it is very common in this age range of employees.
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txtn tns hv btchrd t3h en lang!
TISNF!!!
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I think old people are concerned about a perceived lack of self-disciplined development, a meme that seems to have left the modern generation. Maybe it's true, maybe not. One thing is for sure - it's very hard to say what the effect will be.
Personally I think it is a step forward. Furthermore, the decline of social mores towards self-mastery is a little exaggerated, and is an unrelated issue in any case.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Last week, I was surprised to be playing Taboo with well-educated 20-something American folks at a party, and I referred to "the Monitor and the Merrimac" in a clue, and drew a dozen blank stares.
But then hang around with folks over 50 and try discussing life in the web world or the gaming world, or music, film, or anything relevant to a young person, and you'll get blank stares too.
So do we call the young the dumbest generation because they don't know about button hooks and buggy whips, or do we call elders the dumb ones because they can't use a cell phone and they can't tell the difference between a phishing page and a firefox update request?
Hehe... SMS (i.e. "texting") has been the primary method of telecommunication for teens here in Finland for over 15 years now. And most of the adult population also use SMS more than voice (if measured in number of SMS vs. initiated calls).
It's particularly telling that the subtitle contains misused words; to stupefy is to shock someone to the point that they are temporarily unable to speak. Only a web dictionary confused about the word "dumb" would lead to a mistake like that.
Maybe the author should spend less time spinning suspicions into novels, without data. That they're apparently a journalist is somewhat concerning.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
I took a quick look at that book on a store shelf once, and it smells of a gigantic "get off my lawn" diatribe.
First off, the cover comes off as silly. While I get the ironic imagery of Japaneese robots reenacting the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, it also lacks appreciation for the details for the themes explored in Gundam.
More to the point, there was never some intellectual golden age, during the author's lifetime or otherwise, where people had a broad appreciation for literature, art, and history. A review of the book on Amazon gives many specific examples of this generation being quite a bit smarter than Bauerlein's own generation.
Not a typewriter
Yeah god forbid.
Look I agree that texting is not making anyone less intelligent but texting is a watered down form of social interaction. A friend on facebook most of the time is not a real friend. The real threat is creating social interaction without the social connection. Where we reduce people to objects that we interact with rather than someone who lives and breathes.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
The problem is the ease and frequency of communication. At an average of 2000 messages a month,that is one every 15 minutes. Even if each takes only a minute to read and write,that is around 10% of the time texting,and that does not include other interactions. To put it another way, on average, for every hour long class, or client meeting, or interview, there will be, on average, 4 interruptions.
The problem is made worse by the fact that most people treat this asynchronous communication method as primarily synchronous, insisting on responding to messages they arriver, often creating sever inefficiencies by disrupting other activities. And before one talks about multitasking,multitasking does not work. We have seen enough families murdered and I have seen enough kids failing classes to know that young people do not have the ability to switch tasks without significant loss of effeciency.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
That's 292 kb. c'me on - back when texting was free and we had our sms-2-internet gateways, we surely sent more ;-)
I wish my mom would have just texted me when I was out with my friends when I was growing up. It would have been much easier to pull off faking being sober texting than talking.
As a matter of perspective... in my late teens I would send on average one snail-mail letter a week, written with a fountain-pen, dipper or occasionally a quill (but never sent by owl). Email wasn't an option for me (bearing in mind that this was in the '70s) and neither was SMS. It was customary for real gas-bags like my little sister to yak away on the phone for hours, but for most of us it was easier to wander over to wherever our friends hung out.
In the '90s I sent bucketloads of emails circulating whatever I found amusing du jour, along with a small number of more informative posts (including USENET, for those who remember it).
But in what remains of the "noughties", I send on average about 2.5 SMSs per day and about 8 non-work-related emails per day. And zero snail-mail letters.
Maybe it's just that some of us have less to say as we get older, or maybe there's something else in it. Most of the blather one sees in text messages (or presumably Twitter) tends to remind me of Shakespeare's Dogberry:
"But, masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass."
I'm 38, so from the generation before "texting" came along. Still, I'm a big proponent of communications technologies of ALL types. (In fact, that's really why I'm still involved in the computer field today. I got hooked on computers in the 80's, with a Timex Sinclair 1000 PC that only had 2K of RAM and no modem available for it. It was interesting writing my own programs in BASIC and playing games on it, etc. etc. But eventually, I grew bored with it. When I upgraded to a TRS-80 with a 300 baud modem, that's when things really got interesting. All of a sudden, I saw the real future of computing ... enabling new forms of communication!
That said, I think it's always a matter of using the right tool for the right job. My big issue with SMS messaging is that unlike most communications technologies - it doesn't really bring much new to the table. It wouldn't really have ANY value over instant messaging technologies EXCEPT for the fact the cellular carriers designed it to ensure proper delivery. (If someone sends you a text and your phone is turned off, or not getting good reception at that moment, no problem. They hold it and deliver it as soon as they see the receiving phone is ready to accept it.) Meanwhile, they make a killing charging people for texting plans and even *per message* fees if you don't have one, or go over some arbitrary limit. But the amount of data actually transferred is nothing compared to what you can already move for no extra charge, with any type of "data plan" on the phone.
Meanwhile, I have to deal with junk text messages all the time, and texts sent to the wrong number ... so a whole new hassle that never existed before. There's no real ability to block incoming SMS messages either. (I've tried and tried to get Sprint/Nextel to disable incoming texts on a number of our cellphones at work, but they can never seem to successfully do it. We still get random B.S. about calling 900 sex lines, or fake messages from banks about our bank cards being lost and to call some number to straighten it out.)
Texting can be useful, and I occasionally use it. But when I see younger people claiming it's hugely important for them to organize social outings in "today's hectic world", I have to ask why it wasn't "necessary" for us, just 5-10 years earlier? I think the fact is, we learned to be a little more organized. If you didn't call your buddies a day or two ahead to plan a get-together, then good luck getting many people to show up! The fact that SMSing makes it *possible* to plan with almost no advance notice doesn't make it a "good thing". I don't see a net positive about using these tools to further increase the frantic pace of society.
In the past few years, I've noticed more and more that whenever someone is waiting alone for something to start (e.g. a class, a party, or meeting friends and whatnot) if it's a young person, he or she typically has their phone out and is engaged in text conversations with friends. If it's an older person, he or she is probably more inclined to make smalltalk with strangers or silently wait. Texting, and any communication technology, is a great benefit, and I'm not one of those fear-mongerers who say it's going to ruin civilization. However, when I see young people attached at the hip to their phones instead of learning how to entertain themselves, talk to strangers, or engage in some self-contemplation, I feel like that hinders their preparedness for socializing in new settings.
I couldn't agree with you more, and there was a recent /. article about a week ago on that. Texting just serves as a distraction in important situations, and isn't much different in having someone take a break every few minutes to go chat with someone at the water fountain.
..........FULL STOP.
Being an online denizen since 1971. I can assure you that their will be no Faulkneresque writings come from texting or twittering.
What is lost is the ability to socialize in person.
A generation that has become Text Flowers...
tw
WTF?
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I was part of the "teenager" definition just few years ago and I believe I sent... 3 SMS in my whole life. Most of my friends also barely sent a handful, the worst maybe sent 10 per day. 2000 is just insane.
Your comparing 10 a day to 2000 a month.
In case they can't do it themselves:
10 Text Messages / day * 30.5 day/mo = 305 Text Messages / Month
Compared to 2000 / month is less than an order of magnitude. However approaching 100 per day does seem high, until you consider that they're messaging with multiple friends and unlike most email, texting is usually sentences back and forth (a conversation) instead of larger blocks of thoughts at a time.
The part that seems most ridiculous for this is that carriers charge a default rate of $.25 per message if you don't have some kind of plan. Can you imagine the kids parent's freaking over a $500 phone bill for text messages.
I think there's a huge attraction for young people to communicate without prying ears. I can remember at home using the wired landline and having to stay in one area to have a conversation that was overheard by others. Back then, there were no text messages, emails, instant messages or private lines. Today it's much easier to communicate and share information. It's understood that parents should be involved to some degree in what their children are up to, but part of growing is the cycle of having trust extended and earned. At one point, barring any other extinuating circumstances (pending discipline, recent inapproprate behavior, neglect of responsibility, loss of privledges) kids should have an opportunity to use the trust they have earned while balancing their other obligations. With that said, we all know the upsides to text messages versus phone conversation. It's convenient, you can abbreviate and use symbols, send attchments, communicate silently and have contacts that are in various geographical locations worldwide. I remember speaking in code on the phone back in the day to convey some kid-important message to a friend. We know kids want to talk about what they want to talk about and feel comforatable doing it, why force them to announce it within earshot?
IDK, my BFF Jill?
Teens are talking less? Why is this news? Is there a downside or something?
"Parents are not interested in justice, they are interested in quiet." --- Bill Cosby
You might disagree with Bauerlein, but you should at least check a real dictionary before picking nits.
If I want to ask someone if they want to go to in-and-out for lunch, I send a text.
I can't make a call during math class.
When I was teenager my parents would constantly tell us not to talk on the phone so long.
They always suggest we try "writing" to each other. Written communication is a "lost art" they would tell us.
Now everyone is writing instead of talking... I guess my parents should be happy!
The only thing wrong with this are the high prices for something that is virtually free for the networks to provide.
It's the same argument heard again. It's really nothing more then a dislike of change. Deep inside most people don't like it, but even that changes as change becomes more rapid, it becomes more easily adopted. Putting a telephone in every home was resisted by many people. It would destroy the fabric of socialization. Why go visit the person when you can just call them. The fact that many prefer texting now vs talking, it's the same argument as the phone really. Someday perhaps we'll have fully interactive holograms doing our visiting of each other and we rarely have face to face interactions. Will this be bad? I'm sure it will be considered so at the time. But then they'll remember that back in the day, when people talked less and texted more, we didn't get stupid. Or back when the that talking box on the wall made as all quit "dropping in" unannounced and broke up our socializing habits.... Fear of change is the only stupid thing here....
What makes teens stupid these days certainly isn't texting; it is the lousy below standard education, TV brainwashing, and the "American dream" house, that sits on a lot 100 miles away from any museum, cultural center and interaction with day-to-day events.
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No.
That's what IM is for.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
This is just FUD. Texting will not 'dumb down' teenagers, just as telephone, T.V., and computers have not 'dumbed down' earlier generations. This is just the standard reaction from 'adults' who seem unable to change anymore, when something new gets popular with the 'youth'.
I remember writing old fashioned snail mail letters, sometimes still do. Before email, we send each other messages via BBS, which wasn't much faster than snail mail and had a limited audience. In the early days of the internet email was a great tool but again, limited audience. You could only email people who had an internet connection and in the early days there weren't that many. My first IM experience was on AOL, long before email was really popular but you could only IM with other AOL members.
Texting came along but was held back for a long time by price. It was expensive. Funny push-to-talk hasn't replaced texting, but it hasn't seemed to have caught on quite the same way.
Now, it seems like we're moving more toward group communications via social media. I have friends who haven't emailed me in months, but we still keep up on Facebook. Sometimes trading private messages there. Instead of emailing dozens of people, now the bulk mail notifications go on FB or Twitter and only something private goes via email. The only place I really IM anymore is at the office.
None of that seems to have completely replaced talking. I have friends I've never seen not on the phone. It's just odd. With so many ways to communicate it seems to be stratifying.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
It is also a testament to the lack of consumer-savvy of the average person/'teenager'. (aka sheeple)
As long as you have Internet access (most people seem to), email is free and (effectively) unlimited. It doesn't cost 15c per message, or even 1c per message. While you can voluntarily choose to send a maximum of 160 chars per message, there is no built in limit. You can send 1600, or even 16000 per message, if you want.
If you have a remotely modern cellphone, you can even access email from your cellphone. Of course, you have to at least have some smarts here, since the cell carriers prefer to sell you a locked-down phone that doesn't have email (which doesnt get them revenue).
"Texting" is also a closed network as far as entry. There is no easy way to create your own 'text' server that can accept texts from other providers. It is not closed in terms of gateway - eg - you can send an SMS to most cell phone customers from email using an address composed of their phone number @ something like textmessage.provider.tld.
Its trivial for spammers to send spam texts, but quite difficult to create throw-away numbers to use when registering for websites, as opposed to email, where creating a handful of yahoo or hotmail accounts to give to the intrusive website is trivial.
I remember as child hearing old people saying that now dumber/less respectful/worse/etc than in the "good old times". Looks like a pattern is repeating somewhere. If we get stupider with each tech advance (calculators, tv, phone, computers, internet, cellphones, etc) are we going straight to Idiocracy or maybe we could be not seeing the whole picture? Things change, some things are worse by old standards, and some other things could be better or had no meaning in the old times, or no way/need to measure them before.
Writing and speech is one of the slowest forms of communication. Once we have enabled us to communicate more efficient, someone out there will be happy to point out that it will only make us "slower" or "dumber" as it is far easier to condemn then to embrace.
"Has Texting Replaced Talking For Teens?"
no, wot m8k u sa dat
you lose the ability to 'read' people, and the way people use gestures and facial expressions gets lost. I notice that when I intend to be sarcastic in a text or in an email (even with the silly :-p little ascii expressions) people don't really understand or grasp what it is I am trying to convey. Things like LOL get used so much, you don't really get to see how someone has genuinely responded to your text. Not to mention that its a lot easier to have a 'poker face' in a text message than when really looking someone in the eye. So in conclusion, I feel that people may be 'dumber' when interacting in face to face conversation with someone who has gained the ability to judge people by how they use body language. I think that the younger generation will lose the ability to pick up on subtle non-verbal queues. After all 80% of what you say is body language. :-)
I agree, most American's are substantially dumber now than the rest of the world. They have poorer reading skills, poorer vocabulary and in most cases have very poor reasoning skills.
On the other side I'm sure it's not the texting or the instant messaging. It's just a poor education system, it's probably 2 generations ago or so that American's were more up on science and technology and geography etc. But this is yet another example of a country that is becoming an empire in the wrong way.
America used to discover and make the best products, now they sit and wait for poor quality and design from China and the other countries that America exploits for cheap labour.
You wonder why your jobs are leaving, but can't make the effort to buy the products still made in America.
I am guessing your idea of small business and my idea of small business is totally different.
btw; if you find yourself wondering "what everyone else's problem is" it's usually you with the problem. I learned that when I turned 24.
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
Sounds more like the swan song of people who enjoy monopolizing other people's time by babbling at them. They're upset that their stinking BABBLE license has been revoked, and they now have to get to the f'ing POINT.
Absolutely. But not in the general intelligence type that everyone is assuming.
We aren't getting stupid, but we are absolutely dumbing down our language. And it is (in theory) easily provable.
I'm making numbers up to prove my point, but bear with me, the concept should still hold up with researched numbers...
In the 1700s people used 30,000 words of the english language in their daily speech.
In the 1800s people used 20,000 words of the english language in their daily speech.
In the 1900s people used 10,000 words of the english language in their daily speech.
In the present people use 3,000 words of the english language in their daily speech.
[notice]I repeat all numbers are made up, but I know I've read about this decline in the past.
The written word has also changed significantly over time.
From Shakespeare's Olde English "flowery" language.
To today's text messaging of "R U buzy? C U 2nite" (/puke)
Yet another example is even in the last 50 years. I recently watched Good Night and Good Luck and had to really pay attention to understand some of Edward R Murrow's news reports. Yet have no difficulty listening to Brian Williams, for example, deliver a news report today.
My guess as to the only difference? The number of words we use on a regular basis. [go easy on me on grammatical or spelling errors - that's not the point of this] ;)
I sat around recently having an engaging conversation with older cousins while a group of younger cousins sat there watching us and not saying a peep. We were TV. They laughed, reacted some times but didn't engage. It was kinda sad.
At the same time, correct spelling becomes a distant notion for teens, and "IRC speak" prevalent.
And this is not unique to the US.
I really hope they aren't being charged at the $0.10 to $0.20 per message rate that US carriers usually charge for SMS. If that is the case, I'd really hate to be the one who has to pay that kid's phone bill.
Maybe I'm just too old for this text fad (late 20's), but I think all these texters are wasting their lives. Oh yeah! I said it!
Why ? Because they spend more time texting than anything else, and the constant interruptions every time the phone vibrates just seems like a great way to kick ADD into overdrive. It used to be, there was a time for chatting, and a time for doing whatever it is you like or have to do. Now with these kids and their cell phones, every time is chatting time, and the result is a bunch of extremely socially-dependent people who can't do anything by themselves.
Sure, we've had ICQ for over a decade, and it has positive and negative effects on productivity, depending on its usage, but I think there's a big difference between an IM while I'm sitting at the computer doing other computery things, versus a text message while I'm working or shopping or studying or god-knows-what teenagers do when they're not yapping about hippie crap.
I'll be perfectly frank: I use text messages for work, and only work. I get paged when a server goes down, and I'll rarely type out a text message when coordinating with other techs, but that's about it. If I have sometime to tell someone, I can call them, and if it's too stupid or small a thing to call them about (a common excuse for texts), well really it's just too stupid, period! Do they need this information now ? Yes, No ? Shut up, then!
Then you run into problems where people start texting during important meetings, at the movies, or any other place where outside communication is verboten. It is an unwelcome distraction and quite disrespectful, and by allowing and even encouraging today's kids to rely on texting, we are setting them up for failure, farther down the road.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
No, but it will retard their growth of interpersonal skills with real live people.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In my day, we did home work WHILE talking on the phone. Sometimes even about the actual homework being done.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There's no indication that any of this is making anyone substantially stupider.
I would tend to agree with you, until we had our last presidential election at least. Its pretty obvious the general public's intelligence level has taken a dip.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's conceivable that certain technologies can be harmful to the ability to think, no?
And it's conceivable that such technologies could attain widespread use...
When I put those two things together it spells out in my mind "successive generations could be getting stupider". I don't think this perspective is ignorance of the world.
Let's imagine I had the belief that the youth of today were intellectually less capable. And let's frame this hypothetical in context of your quote.
First, I recommend to you to have enough pride (i.e. comfort in one's personal respectability) such that you don't reflexively bristle at things that aren't necessarily contemptuous, or, even if indeed they are derisive. Antagonism degrades the quality of discourse and impedes progress, and a wounded pride stokes antagonism. It's conceivable that a person could believe today's youth are getting dumber without also holding a feeling of contempt. They might even be on about the topic because rather than disregard for the increasingly stupefied they have concern. Not everyone complaining about the group you identify with sees you as the proverbial "Them" (though, true, many would); the more you create the divide with your retaliatory contempt or the more you allow detractors to create the divide with you by letting them rile you and making you feel oppositional, the worse off everyone is. If you can master the wisdom of "no enemy" you can dramatically raise the quality and usefulness of discourse.
The focus of youth, as your quote's meaning relates to, is not exactly the issue at hand. The thing we're talking about is not exactly youth's decisions of relevance, but rather tendencies of action. In this forum, we're specifically discussing use of a(n expressive) communication medium. (More generally, if I had a concern for humanity's declining intelligence, it wide be with a wider net including broadcast media.) If I were clever enough to "understand your world", I'd recognize the validation of many of the choices you (today's youth) made. And as with the quote's issue of validating the reasonability of philosophical focus, so we could, with an understanding of youth's context, validate choices of communication media. Texting makes sense. Be not ashamed.
But that doesn't mean texting is necessarily good for you. Nor are even any number of modern communication choices. Surfing, arguing in chat forums, having talk radio on in the background, even watching TV — these things are all mixed bags. Sure, we may find ourselves enamored of the benefits. Sure, we may so well enjoy the media and so frequently use them that we go to the length of identifying with them (that is, think of our identities such that these activities are included), but neither of these things means that we should turn a blind eye to the harmful aspects. It's hard to see clearly if we're playing the role of unmitigated defender, defying all detractions and admitting none ourselves.
I would worry that today's youth is subject to some truly dangerous influence. I believe television really started off our decline. It's about undermining focus. TV execs figured that jolts improved their bottom lines so jolts were inflicted on us. The jolts happened to go hand-in-hand with bite-sized flow of story, and so as we sat mesmerized and stewing in our hormonal reactions to these jarring and frenetic streams of tripe and titillation our focus and memory were atrophying. With the comfort of television, and with the newly-acquired discomfort in trying to focus to read books, we fell into the trap of reading less and less and being titillated more and more. And that was over the generation or generation and a half before you.
So your generation is out the gate with a stumbling start. Not only are your elders handicapped and thus your raising by them corrupted, but you were launched with TV jolts working at their fevered pitch finest. From your earlies
Right on, Sister! Fight the power! All these big daddies are just aging wannabe hepcats. They are so uncool! So square! They just don't groove to our crazy lingo, you dig? They're such drags, such freams! Our gen has it made in the shade with our omnitasking powers of metathink and nonlinear preceptrons in the temporal. I think it's time to text the droogs together for an indulgence in ultraviolence to pilot our savvy into the record, tight me? If the dudes come through with their yarbles in dobby condition, we can spend some hourage back at the crib with the old lubbilubbing.
Aye, I'll go further. Let's see your examples in review:
"Texting is fine if you just want to send 'hey whats up' or 'I'm on my way' or a 'catch a movie tonight?' or 'which pub, what time?'"
(Pronoun below is the "undefined you", not the poster above or anyone in this thread.)
1. I don't want to get texted "what's up". Nothing's up. If some really big thing was up, I'd have told you by now. Or if you're planning to leave me a nice thought about some recent event, say that instead. Having a nice message that says "Gee man, I'm sorry the chick dumped you. She's a bitch anyway." is better than having to actually answer "what's up".
2. If you want to actually get together and do stuff, call and leave a voice mail or email what you had in mind with *at least half* the info worked out. Then I can do my quarter of the digging to see if that makes any sense logistically. Then a couple calls pull it together. Or watch it fail.
3. Don't text me "I'm on my way". Unless we're catching a plane and I think you're gonna miss it 'cause you're already late, I'll assume you're on your way.. for LARGE values of "on your way" which sometimes covers half an hour. I'll read.
4. "Which pub, what time" was covered in #2. If that's someone's opening line, then he's already doomed to 7 text interchanges.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It's even worse with those bluetooth pieces because the gestalt decided that without having to spend the effort holding the phone, they can now chirp away for 20 min at a time. Of course, they're standing wrong-profile to you so you are disoriented for 5 sec while you realize they're not talking to anyone in the room.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Look at your average baby boomer: They usually have less than 5 friends, most of them are coworkers, and if they are married their spouse provides most of the social interaction they're going to get. And they rot away watching TV or with hobbies like gardening.
It's called having a family. See how much you feel like going out to a bar or club spontaneously at 3 in the morning when you haven't had a decent night's sleep in 6 months due to screaming babies, are never quite caught up on chores despite doing little else every evening and going to bed late, are busy ferrying kids to their various sports on your days off. Meanwhile your body isn't what it use to be - it's no longer fun to be up at 3am because you've got that enormous sleep debt. If you do it a couple of nights in a row the next day is hell where all you look forward to is going to bed. By the way, all your friends are in the same boat because everyone has kids in roughly that same 15 year slot between 25-40 so suddenly it's not hard to lose contact with a friend that lives 20 mins away. As for time for making new friends, unless you get along really well with a neighbour, forget about it! If you do find time for yourself you feel guilty because you haven't had a chance to spend quality family time. You schedule your holidays around family commitments. Mind you this is if everything is going well!
I have 1 child - a 1 year old. He's taken most of the year just to get his sleeping sorted out. I still find time for SOME of my hobbies but dear Spagetti monster I'd like to find an opportunity to go fly my r/c planes sometime soon. (Managed to get out once last month and the weather wasn't right. C'est la vie). Gardening may be popular because it's an immediate hobby. Just step out into the back yard and you're good to go. It's not my bag. A good immediate hobby for me is photography - just grab a camera and find something of interest to photograph (including the family). Nothing wrong with someone else enjoying a hobby just because you find it boring. In fact there's a good dose of irony in complaining over people not understanding your "texting generation" when you're perfectly happy to have a dig at someone for gardening (pun intended).
I'm 34, so not THAT old. I agree that there are a lot of older people who do not understand the technology, but there are also youner people who don't (yet) understand what it's like to be older.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
It's not the texting that makes kids stupid. It's the teachers' unions and their constant push for high pay with no work.
Texting is just making kids unable to communicate with our generation, not that they want to, anyway. It's not making them stupid.
... and you can wait a minute before writing something you will regret!
slashwhat?
"Panic over social decline has caused more damage than social decline ever did"
Could have sworn I saw this quote on XKCD once, but now I can't seem to find it.
Makes sense either way, though.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Honestly, I've seen that sig of yours, but I'm finally getting around to asking: Why exactly do you mean?
Is it some Booth besides John Wilkes, I think that mental association is what's confusing me here...
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Most text messages are one or two sentences, sometimes with only a few words, the average text is probably under 10 words in length. Then when you consider 2000 a month is 66 per day, this kid is managing less than 600 words per day by text message. Thats peanuts. What's that really, two or three emails, slashdot rants, one phone conversation?
I really think there is no plausible basis to the assumption texting is replacing conversation as the prosetlyising of a generation of paranoid parents implies.
I think text messaging fills a gap, a need not previously met. It enables communication where otherwise we'd have kept our thoughts to ourselves or just plain been out of contactable reach:
It fits where you want to send a few thoughts, but there isn't really enough reason to waste someones time in a full conversation or you'd otherwise be out of contact.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
I'm not against text messages, but maybe you should take into consideration that talking (out loud by phone) is probably better when compared to text messaging in terms of "brain-use". So maybe if worried about your child, it's good to promote speaking sometimes instead of text messaging.
I seem to remember Gen X kids being accused of the same things when we were teenagers (lazy, out of touch, stupid, etc). Guess what? The boomers were accused of the same thing by their parents.
Frankly, I think the kids coming up nowadays are a lot more sane about some stuff (drugs, for example) than we were. Less race riots in schools, too.
But come on, when did Slashdot become overrun with geezers? You pick a few examples and apply a broad brush to an entire generation from a few selected anecdotes. If you could point to studies that show declining IQ scores, I'd be a little worried. Complaining about teens being lazy? Aristotle did that, and he was as correct then as the old farts before their time that are grousing on this story are now. Live a little, and get some perspective.
It's good to hear that the western world is catching up..
this is so more than 10 years ago!
I don't see this as a big problem. It's more of an opportunity.
We need phones that can help prioritize text messages. Some few you need to read immediately, and in some cases you're involved in an active dialog. On the other hand, anything from Twitter probably doesn't require immediate attention. So your phone should have both distinctive ring and some way to set (preferably without looking) your current level of availability - (for example "available", "important stuff only", "emergencies only".) It would also be nice if places like theaters could send out a local signal that phones recognized as "set to emergencies only".
To give "emergency" some teeth, charge a few dollars to send at "emergency" priority. Telcos would love this.
So get busy, mobile app people.
Context is everything. Your entirely right in your analysis, based on the context you put them in.
But for an alternate view... this is how I use these two:
"I'm on my way".
I do this when I'm running late, usually with an eta either when I'm late or when I'm needed for something -- I get off work at randomish times so the time changes all the time. I don't need a response or a conversation, I just want to let them know when I'll be there so they can decide how to use their time until I get there. If it doesn't matter when I get there, then I don't.
Which pub, what time
When I text something like that, its not an 'opener', its because we've already agreed we're going out. Again I don't need a conversation. I just need to know where and when. I'll meet friends for lunch like this too... a bunch of them work toghether and pick a place every day. If I can join them, I just need to know what they've decided and when they'll be there... I'll save the conversation for the meal.
"Nothing typed with someone's thumbs has ever been important." -- Gin Rummy, "The Boondocks"
Two girls update their facebook page to say they are trapped in a stormwater drain, rather than calling emergency services - full story at http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/07/2678945.htm?section=justin
That would be great! How do we make all of them text instead of talk?
Anyone born after 1990 isn't really anything much other than a corporate milch cow, as far as I'm concerned.
The system has raised them to be exactly that. They buy what they're told, think what they're told, say what they're told, and do what they're told. Political freedom, or any desire for it among them, is completely dead. They have no concept whatsoever of civic responsibility, and even if they did, it might take time away from watching Survivor.
The occasional news report you hear about a school shooting or new serial killer, basically represents the occasional exception to that rule; someone who didn't simply want to be a good little corporate drone, and who ended up going postal from the frustration of not having a viable alternative.
So yeah. We'll read news reports every so often which will stun us about the degree to which these kids mindlessly consume, (texting toddlers etc) but eventually, it will get to the point where none of the older generation(s) are left, and mindless, servile consumerism in a society straight out of The Running Man will be entirely the norm. I try not to go into my local city too often these days; I used to enjoy it, but the constant reminders of how close we are to finishing the transition to total fascism, is something I find depressing.
So congratulations, kids. Welcome to your global inheritance. If you happen to want an undisguised picture of what the future is going to look like, free of corporate spin, there's this little book called 1984 which you might want to pick up sometime; assuming it's still for sale, that is, and of course that you can actually read more conventional English than lolspeak.
As a continuation of the above and related to this thread's subject, I would suggest that the form of your language really does matter, because it shapes the way you think. Texting limits the conceptual breadth of the language, which in turn limits its users' capacity for intelligent thought.
"I get more social interaction in the flesh on an average day that my baby boomer parents and aunts and uncles get in a week, sometimes a month! "
All those baby-boomers had the same 'life' as you when they were young. It's called getting old, surviving your youth. The friends you have now will become a distant memory and newer friends may criss-cross your life w/out lasting long.
That's what you can expect w/aging, much narrower social horizons.
Enjoy your scene while it lasts because if/when you grow older it takes on
less importance; replaced by having a few really close friends and a place
of one's own to retreat to when the rat-race overwhelms.
Enjoy yer life, but stop pre-disposing your mind to what older people have
been through; its not as different as you may think.
resist propaganda
Texting seems to me to combine all the disadvantages of a phone call and email - immediate interruption and typing.
I think US conservatives need to stop implying that liberals embrace socialism and communism. Those terms don't have any emotional impact for people under the age of 30.
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That's one way to stop excessive texting.
Thank you. Thank you. As an educator, this phenomena has been at the forefront of my mind for a long time. Every day, I go into school, and pull kids away from the computers, 4chan, google chat, Icanhascheeseburger, youtube. I confiscate cellphones and ipods. Last year, I caught a kid bluetoothing porn from his phone to his friends laptop. Keep in mind, these kids are in middle school. [/BEGIN /i/ kids these days /i/ STATEMENT/] Kids these days are compelled to text. Attention spans have dropped drastically. They do not know how to use a library or a dictionary- they are more likely to use dictionary.com. All scholarship is informed by wikipedia.
Anything longer than three sentences MUST be written on M$FT word. Food (even that provided by the school) is supplied by Kraft, McDonalds, and Coca Cola.
Our curriculum is Neutered by political correctness and censorship, guided by fear of litigation. Luckily, gym class is still mandatory. Language Arts is not. (English is not politically correct so it has been excised from the curriculum.)
My colleagues and I take mandatory, government funded seminars on self-defense against children. They smuggle nips of alcohol and take shots in the bathroom to get through the boredom of the conferences. We received thousands of dollars for a new smartboard this year. It sits in the corner, especially when the teachers don't feel like teaching and declare a free period so that they can catch up on their grading. (they don't get paid to work after school, and so they don't plan the curriculum or grade after school)
God help you if you make it to the High School, which just lost a million bucks due to no child left behind, because tenth grade science is taught at a sixth grade level. Our IT department is in charge of the IT for the six other schools in our district. Our sensitive documents are shredded by the special ed. kids, who often skim over the forms when they notice their friends or families names, prescriptions, therapy, etc.
We keep all of this under wraps. The parents have no idea. They visit our glossy, WEB 2.0 webpage and see flash video of their children, hard at work.
As for after school entertainment, we have movies with built in corporate advertising, Miley Cyrus, and American Idol.
Yeah, one genre isn't inherently better than another. Our culture is evolving. Change isn't inherently bad, it's just change. Embrace it.
Such progress we have made.
[/END /i/ kids these days /i/ STATEMENT/]
If you want to know why /i/ kids these days /i/ are like this, turn your gaze upon the parents, the teachers, and our society. The only culture that they know is the one that we have handed down to them.