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Teens Would Rather Text Their Friends Than Talk To Them In Person, Poll Shows (nypost.com)
A new poll of 1,141 teenagers shows that teenagers prefer to text their friends than talk in person. The findings come from Common Sense Media's 2018 Social Media, Social Life survey. Fortune reports: Only 15% of teens said Facebook was their main social media site, down from 68% in 2012. Snapchat is now the main site for 41% of teenagers, followed by Instagram at 22%. In addition, this year's survey saw texting (35%) surpass in-person (32%) as teens' favorite way to communicate with friends. In 2012, 49% preferred to communicate in person, versus 33% who preferred texting.
[M]ore teens said that social media had a positive effect on their levels of loneliness, depression, and anxiety than those who said it had a negative one, but it seems to have the opposite effect on teens who score low on the authors' social-emotional well-being scale. Of those, 70% said they sometimes feel left out when using social media, 43% feel bad if no one likes or comments on their posts, and 35% said they had been cyberbullied. They were also more likely to say that social media was "extremely" or "every" important, compared to their peers who score high on the scale.
[M]ore teens said that social media had a positive effect on their levels of loneliness, depression, and anxiety than those who said it had a negative one, but it seems to have the opposite effect on teens who score low on the authors' social-emotional well-being scale. Of those, 70% said they sometimes feel left out when using social media, 43% feel bad if no one likes or comments on their posts, and 35% said they had been cyberbullied. They were also more likely to say that social media was "extremely" or "every" important, compared to their peers who score high on the scale.
did they really need to do a survey for this? i guess with a name like Common Sense media, you'd expect this ..
Thanks parents for (lack of) raising such a shitty generation.
Teens do what they see parents (or any other adult) are doing.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Read the title as "Teens Would Rather Text Their Friends Than Talk To Them In Prison, Poll Shows".
Me too...
Kids now a days like to do microtransactions with communication. Calling up and going through pleasantries is a lot of overhead for a short, half-thought. Better to blast small thoughts.
and his short story "The Machine Stops"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Mostly random stuff.
I remember when the only social media was go with your friends and have a good time. No internet on phones, no wifi, just talking and listening. And If you want to spend a time with some people you just go for a coffee or walk in the street with that person. Now we have all this with just a click on screen :(
Mundoriego
They were also more likely to say that social media was "extremely" or "every" important, compared to their peers who score high on the scale.
Are these teens who speak English as a second language by any chance?
I'm 42 years old and I would much rather text someone than actually have to talk to them.
I'd rather read a text description of a news event or a tutorial than slog through a Youtube video of some dolt slowly describing it. Likewise a text message is often the more efficient way to send a brief tidbit of data without wasting time on rituals of politeness or getting sidetracked into "hey did you see that show about X" baloney which happens in spoken "communication"
When I was a teen, it was mostly IRC, then came the various YM/AIM and ICQ (in my country at least, those were a later addition).
At least now you don't have to worry about net splits or messing up someone's ICQ number.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
I can't tell you how often I've seen two teens sitting on a bench texting and wondered "are they here together, and are they texting each other?"
Though, I have to admit, some of the more pathetic examples of this are seeing a family of four who have gone out for dinner ... and then all four of them have their faces buried in their phones.
The extent to which smart phones have made people into zombies is frightening sometimes.
The only difference is I would rather talk in person than BOTH phone or text. I hate talking over the phone because I find it's easy to misconstrue feelings and intentions, even more so than texting. I always let phone calls go to answering machine (for example).
I'm just wondering how people are thinking when they answer these questions. Maybe the reason teens would rather text their friend than see them in person is that it would be such a hassle to get Dad to drive them over to their friend's house just to call them a turdmonger when it only takes a second to do so via text.
Have you talked to their friends?
Yeah - I'd rather send them a text message than talk to them too......especially since I have text messaging on my phone completely blocked.
As an adult I find text messaging very handy. I use it for how email is traditionally used: When I need to ask a question, send information, or similar and I don't care when or if I get a response. That way I don't waste time with small-talk or other unnecessary overhead when I need to communicate something. I can send it out, then forget about it and continue doing what I was doing.
Well, I really don't know what the survey says, because none of the links provided in TFS leads to a copy of the actual survey. Without being able to look at the survey, it's impossible to evaluate the claims made in the overly-slick and somewhat glib 'executive summary'. That summary, in the absence of the actual questionnaire on which its conclusions are ostensibly based, is utterly meaningless and not at all newsworthy. Nothing to see here, move along please...
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
I guess some people donâ(TM)t have kids. I knew this couple years ago. Kind of anti social that kids today canâ(TM)t handle direct social interaction and would rather text. I remember back when my daughter was in high school her friends all sat around texting each other even though they were right there together. Thatâ(TM)s when I realized how bad the social behavior of young people was thanks to technology.
I know a lot of ham radio operators that prefers to make HF DX QSO using CW or PSK31 rather than SSB. One could use a narrow IF filter and there's less QRM anyway.
...at least from a business perspective.
Our company just hired a new round of fresh faces... "we want to get some fresh college grads" they said. None of them want to use the phone to talk... ever... for anything, but they're still staring down at the damn thing all day. When I'm in our lunch line it's like a pack of zombies all
I'll be trying to hash something out with a client through email or text and will continuously ask "free for a call? can we talk about this over the phone?" and they just straight up ignore the question. If I do take it upon myself to just call, they're too flustered to speak coherently.
I mean I get having to adjust to a job but it just goes on and on
But office workers preferring email isn't as click bait as TEENS
This is mostly true for anyone in most cases, and would have been true 10 years ago when texting was invented. For some reason I do prefer to call my parents even though they text fine, maybe because I don't talk to them much and they like it.
Reminder to call your parents today
In other words we are all becoming Victorian English. We would rather write a strongly worded letter than confront in person or send a Thank You note instead of thanking in person.
Thank god for texting as it is leading to a revival of written communication which had been dying with the onslaught of overly gregarious extrovert types who got out of control with the invention of the phone and the automobile.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm an adult, and texting is a nice way of touching base with friends when you really don't have anything to say. Rather than call up for 15 minutes of attempting to find a conversation, you can send a text, or a picture, or something funny that made you think of them. And it's asynchronous so you don't have to worry if they pick up or not, or listen to a VM or not. Plenty of times a text 'conversation' turns into a phone call, because it's not great at high throughput the way a call can be. Plus when you can touch base with multiple people at a time. How much time did we waste on the phone talking for hours 'about nothing' according to our parents? Are we annoyed because 'kids today' can do it more efficiently?
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
I recently had to do remote tech support for a library. Instead of calling me, she texted me.
Completely infuriating. Id get pictures of the teamviewer sessions, and then have to text back any issues and then she'd text whether or not it was working.
I've noticed this is becoming a trend. Instead of an email or call, I get a text. Which has to be the single worse way of communicating any sort of complicated ideas. Not to mention there's no real record of the conversation.
I have 4 young 20-somethings.
2 are Eagle Scouts, and getting them to actually go IN PERSON to visit local businesses and present their projects to ask for funding was far more anxiety producing and work than the whole planning and project execution.
2 are daughters, and even when they're having drama issues or trouble getting things planned, if we suggest "well, why don't you just CALL them and get it sorted much faster than text/IG/whatever method they're using?" is met with incredulous stares.
-Styopa
We all are WAITING for other people to shut up so we can say what WE want to say. We talk at everybody wanting them to listen to us (and maybe settling for them just hearing us) but we try to hide our impatience while we wait for the next chance to talk some more. THINK about it. How often are you waiting for them to finish talking or jumping to summations of what they are expressing getting board having to wait for the next paragraph to come... or thinking about what you are going to say next as they trigger ideas of how you'll say it?
The culture and the technology promotes modern behaviors that are so normal that most people are completely unaware; it began in the culture before cell phones existed. Technology has catered to these behaviors and amplified them. Our shortened attention spans for example have been significantly amplified; just as our natural sugar high is now exploited with an over use of sugars... in every food.
Texting kills real conversation; it promotes the self centered side reality of our existence encouraging selfishness in this area; possibly extending into other areas. It feeds the natural urges like the chemicals do but it does not satisfy like the real thing is meant to so we are left feeling constantly hungry. Slow things down, and THINK about the life passing you bye while you frantically try to do more and more as if you have limited time. The Irony...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
A phone call takes more time and more effort than a text. It would be impossible to have contact with a wide group without some sort of asynchronous communication. Plus people rarely have downtime now - they are constantly doing stuff, even if that is Netflix.
The more isolated you are, the more avoidant you are of social contact; the threshold you have to overcome to go out and actually socialize with people F2F gets higher and higher. Then you get what they're talking about here.
I suppose speech-to-text has gotten good enough that you don't have to type your texts out anymore. I often get them when I'm driving, though. I suppose I could find a text app that reads them out with text-to-speech too. And it'd be great if I didn't have to look at the phone and could just dictate my response and have the phone send it back. Wait a minute...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
A self imposed Matrix, humans are doomed.
Is it any surprise they don't want to talk to each other? They're all awful. I wouldn't talk to a teen either if I could help it.
> I don't recall the exact numbers, but something like
> only 12% of High School Seniors have been on a date.
Society has changed and viruses have evolved. Showing my age here. Back in the mid-1960's 12 and 13 year olds were going on dates and screwing. No problem. Today if a pair of 15-year-olds get caught having consensual sex in a jurisdiction where age-of-consent is 16, they *BOTH* end up on the sex-offender-registry for life. And back in the 60's, condoms were made fun of. If you caught something, a few penicillin shots would cure it in a couple of weeks, and you were good to go. That was before herpes and aids. And don't get me started on "The Sharia Law of Date Rape". It's basically "I accuse thee, I accuse thee, I accuse thee" and the guy is instantly guilty. Is it any wonder guys are avoiding dating?
> And, only about 1/3 of current 16 year olds have a driver's license. (These numbers may be off,
> but the general gist is right). That's.... odd... Among my group of peers, getting a DL was.. everything..
> It was freedom.. It was independence.. Most of my friends took the test on their birthday. I certainly did.
> Spending a day at the DMV on your 16th birthday is what everyone did. Now... apparently not so much...
Here in Ontario, Canada, things are extremely different. https://www.ontario.ca/page/ge...
* age 16; written test and eye exam for "G1" licence, i.e. beginner's permit. Must have a person in front seat who has held a valid G licence for at least 4 years
* cannot drive on major highways/expressways, unless the accompanying person in front seat is a provincially certified driving instructor
* after 12 months (or 8 months if you train at a provincially certified driving school) you can do the G1 driver's test
* if you pass that, you get a "G2" licence. You can now drive alone, etc, but there are still some restrictions if you're under 19.
* keep your nose clean for 12 months and pass yet another test, and you get the full "G" driver's licence.
The *MINIMUM* timeline is age 18 without a provincially certified driving school, or 17 years and 8 months with a provincialy certified driving school.
And a driver's licence means nothing of you don't have a car. Back in the 1960's a do-it-yourself mechanic, or a local garage could keep an old clunker running. With today's computerized cars, only dealers can even read the diagnostics, let alone tune or repair the settings.
Try to get a used car for under $5,000 today. Oh, and forget about part time jobs at a fast food joint. Adults have taken them as 2nd jobs to make ends meet. And did I mention sky high insurance for young drivers?
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
... with any text communications due to my speech and hearing impediments. I wished I was a teen again like I did with dial-ups! :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).