Issue Paper - Texting

Thesis: Texting has both positive and negatives effects on the individual, their relationships, and society as a whole; therefore it must be carefully balanced to ensure quality of being.

Outline:

1. Intro: Texting has both positive and negative effects on the individual, their relationships, and society.

2. The individual

a. Positive – Hand-eye coordination, ability to be brief and efficient in communication, increases self confidence

i. Generation Text: Teens' IM Lingo Evolving into a Hybrid Language "They are altering language to suit the technology," said David Silver, a University of Washington professor of communication who studies new media. Teens have also incorporated IM the same as teens have always used slang, as a way to separate themselves as a group, he said."

ii. Cell Phone Use in Social Settings: Preliminary Results from a Study in the United States and France "mobile phones allow individuals to maintain connectedness and expand the scope of their activities beyond what was achievable without the technology."

iii. Generation Text: Teens' IM Lingo Evolving into a Hybrid Language "Boys find they can chat with girls without blushing"

b. Negative – more difficult ability to spell, decreased linguistic ability, decreased ability to talk with someone face to face, wasting time, addiction to phone, decreases self confidence

i. Communication Technology and their Influence on Language: Reshuffling Tenses in Croatian SMS Text Messaging "One of the considerations one has to keep in mind constantly when dealing with SMS text messages are the limitations that this communication technology imposes on linguistic and communicative possibilities."

3. Relationships

a. Positive – Convenient! Easy access to information, getting help if needed, just talking to someone, quick and efficient way to communicate, keep in contact with family and friends, addressing a tough situation in an informal method,

i. Text Appeal: The Psychology of SMS Texting and its IMplications for the Design of the Mobile Phone Interfaces "For some, this provides greater freedom of self-expression, and leads to online relationships that are stronger and more enduring than those in the real world (Parks and Floyd, 1996)."

ii. Generation Text: Teens' IM Lingo Evolving into a Hybrid Language "She sends instant messages every day and also checks them on her cell phone. She chats with friends from summer camp who live in other cities and even taught her 70-year-old grandmother in Olympia, Wash., how to IM. Often she talks with kids from school that she doesn't see in class, friends of friends she wouldn't call on the phone."

b. Negative – Disapproval of texting from elderly people, rude to text if you’re with other people, awkward in person if only source of communication is through text, unable to distinguish real emotion, bullying, not getting to know the real person, disconnection between teens and adults.

i. Generation Text: Teens' IM Lingo Evolving into a Hybrid Language "Also, at some point IM can become a social crutch. "Teens need to learn to relate one-on-one while speaking in full sentences in English," Kastner said. "Looking someone in the eye while talking about feelings is a necessary skill. IM can produce a false intimacy that teens don't know how to re-create in real life."

ii. Generation Text: Teens' IM Lingo Evolving into a Hybrid Language "For teens, instant messaging is a real-time way to chat with several friends via the computer (or mobile phone, in some cases) in a shorthand, abbreviated language that puzzles most adults.

4. Society

a. Positive – increased marketing (this could also be a negative), easy way to communicate to a lot of people in a short amount of time, new method of communication known to everyone

i. Article: Use of SMS Text Messaging to Improve Outpatient Attendance "Of the 2276 patients with a sched- uled outpatient appointment in August 2004, 1482 (65.1%) gave a mobile tele- phone contact number; of these, 1135 attended the appointment (FTA rate, 23.4%)."

ii. Generation Txt? The Sociolinguistics of Young People's Text-Messaging "While adult exaggerations about the significance of technology in the lives of young people may be questionable, the fact remains that, in many countries, the mobile phone is an altogether far more popular, pervasive communication technology than in others (Katz & Aakhus, 2002a)."

b. Negative – increased marketing, increased automobile accidents, unable to pay attention to real live events including paying attention to one person at a time, focusing on school, church, work, etc.

i. Driving While Distracted "A 2007 Harris Interactive poll found that 91 percent of Americans think that driving while texting is as dangerous as drunk driving, and 89 percent of Americans support prohibitions on driving while texting."

ii. Students Crave a Break on Cellphone Ban "At Albert Einstein High School in Kensington, employees confiscate eight to 10 cellphones a week, said Jim Fernandez, the principal. Serious transgressions, such as using cellphones to cheat during tests or forwarding sexually explicit photos, have not been reported.

5. Conclusion: Readers can now make their own educated opinion about what they think of texting.